Queen Elizabeth being dead about ten o'clock in the morning, March 24,1603, Sir Robert Cary posted away, unsent, to King James of Scotland toinform him of the "accident," and got made a baron of the realm for hisride. On his way down to take possession of his new kingdom the kingdistributed the honor of knighthood right and left liberally; atTheobald's he created eight-and-twenty knights, of whom Sir RichardBaker, afterwards the author of "A Chronicle of the Kings of England,"was one. "God knows how many hundreds he made the first year," says thechronicler, "but it was indeed fit to give vent to the passage of Honour,which during Queen Elizabeth's reign had been so stopped that scarce anycounty of England had knights enow to make a jury."

Sir Richard Baker was born in 1568, and died in 1645; his "Chronicle"appeared in 1641. It was brought down to the death of James in 1625,when, he having written the introduction to the life of Charles I, thestorm of the season caused him to "break off in amazement," for he hadthought the race of "Stewards" likely to continue to the "world's end";and he never resumed his pen. In the reign of James two things losttheir lustre--the exercise of tilting, which Elizabeth made a specialsolemnity, and the band of Yeomen of the Guard, choicest persons both forstature and other good parts, who graced the court of Elizabeth; James"was so intentive to Realities that he little regarded shows," and in histime these came utterly to be neglected. The virgin queen was the lastruler who seriously regarded the pomps and splendors of feudalism.

It was characteristic of the age that the death of James, which occurredin his fifty-ninth year, should have been by rumor attributed to"poyson"; but "being dead, and his body opened, there was no sign at allof poyson, his inward parts being all sound, but that his Spleen was alittle faulty, which might be cause enough to cast him into an Ague: theordinary high-way, especially in old bo'dies, to a natural death."

The chronicler records among the men of note of James's time Sir FrancisVere, "who as another Hannibal, with his one eye, could see more in theMartial Discipline than common men can do with two"; Sir Edward Coke;Sir Francis Bacon, "who besides his profounder book, of Novum Organum,hath written the reign of King Henry the Seventh, in so sweet a style,that like Manna, it pleaseth the tast of all palats"; William Camden,whose Description of Britain "seems to keep Queen Elizabeth alive afterdeath"; "and to speak it in a word, the Trojan Horse was not fuller ofHeroick Grecians, than King James his Reign was full of men excellent inall kindes of Learning." Among these was an old university acquaintanceof Baker's, "Mr. John Dunne, who leaving Oxford, lived at the Innes ofCourt, not dissolute, but very neat; a great Visitor of Ladies, a greatfrequenter of Playes, a great writer of conceited Verses; until suchtimes as King James taking notice of the pregnancy of his Wit, was ameans that he betook him to the study of Divinity, and thereuponproceeding Doctor, was made Dean of Pauls; and became so rare a Preacher,that he was not only commended, but even admired by all who heard him."

The times of Elizabeth and James were visited by some awful casualtiesand portents. From December, 1602, to the December following, the plaguedestroyed 30,518 persons in London; the same disease that in the sixthyear of Elizabeth killed 20,500, and in the thirty-sixth year 17,890,besides the lord mayor and three aldermen. In January, 1606, a mightywhale came up the Thames within eight miles of London, whose body, seendivers times above water, was judged to be longer than the largest shipon the river; "but when she tasted the fresh water and scented the Land,she returned into the sea." Not so fortunate was a vast whale cast uponthe Isle of Thanet, in Kent, in 1575, which was "twenty Ells long, andthirteen foot broad from the belly to the backbone, and eleven footbetween the eyes. One of his eyes being taken out of his head was morethan a cart with six horses could draw; the Oyl being boyled out of hishead was Parmacittee." Nor the monstrous fish cast ashore inLincolnshire in 1564, which measured six yards between the eyes and had atail fifteen feet broad; "twelve men stood upright in his mouth to getthe Oyl." In 1612 a comet appeared, which in the opinion ofDr. Bainbridge, the great mathematician of Oxford, was as far above themoon as the moon is above the earth, and the sequel of it was thatinfinite slaughters and devastations followed it both in Germany andother countries. In 1613, in Standish, in Lancashire, a maiden child wasborn having four legs, four arms, and one head with two faces--the onebefore, the other behind, like the picture of Janus. (One thinks of theprodigies that presaged the birth of Glendower.) Also, the same year,in Hampshire, a carpenter, lying in bed with his wife and a young child,"was himself and the childe both burned to death with a sudden lightning,no fire appearing outwardly upon him, and yet lay burning for the spaceof almost three days till he was quite consumed to ashes." This year theGlobe playhouse, on the Bankside, was burned, and the year following thenew playhouse, the Fortune, in Golding Lane, "was by negligence of acandle, clean burned down to the ground." In this year also, 1614, thetown of Stratford-on-Avon was burned. One of the strangest events,however, happened in the first year of Elizabeth (1558), when "dyed SirThomas Cheney, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, of whom it is reportedfor a certain, that his pulse did beat more than three quarters of anhour after he was dead, as strongly as if he had been still alive." In1580 a strange apparition happened in Somersetshire--three scorepersonages all clothed in black, a furlong in distance from those thatbeheld them; "and after their appearing, and a little while tarrying,they vanished away, but immediately another strange company, in likemanner, color, and number appeared in the same place, and theyencountered one another and so vanished away. And the third timeappeared that number again, all in bright armour, and encountered oneanother, and so vanished away. This was examined before Sir GeorgeNorton, and sworn by four honest men that saw it, to be true." Equallywell substantiated, probably, was what happened in Herefordshire in 1571:"A field of three acres, in Blackmore, with the Trees and Fences, movedfrom its place and passed over another field, traveling in the highwaythat goeth to Herne, and there stayed." Herefordshire was a favoriteplace for this sort of exercise of nature. In 1575 the little town ofKinnaston was visited by an earthquake: "On the seventeenth of Februaryat six o'clock of the evening, the earth began to open and a Hill with aRock under it (making at first a great bellowing noise, which was heard agreat way off) lifted itself up a great height, and began to travel,bearing along with it the Trees that grew upon it, the Sheep-folds, andFlocks of Sheep abiding there at the same time. In the place from whenceit was first moved, it left a gaping distance forty foot broad, andforescore Ells long; the whole Field was about twenty Acres. Passingalong, it overthrew a Chappell standing in the way, removed an Ewe-Treeplanted in the Churchyard, from the West into the East; with the likeforce it thrust before it High-wayes, Sheep-folds, Hedges, and Trees,made Tilled ground Pasture, and again turned Pasture into Tillage.Having walked in this sort from Saturday in the evening, till Mondaynoon, it then stood still." It seems not improbable that Birnam woodshould come to Dunsinane.

It was for an age of faith, for a people whose credulity was fed on suchprodigies and whose imagination glowed at such wonderful portents, thatShakespeare wrote, weaving into the realities of sense those awfulmysteries of the supernatural which hovered not far away from everyEnglishman of his time.

Shakespeare was born in 1564, when Elizabeth had been six years on thethrone, and he died in 1616, nine years before James I., of the faultyspleen, was carried to the royal chapel in Westminster, "with greatsolemnity, but with greater lamentation." Old Baker, who says of himselfthat he was the unworthiest of the knights made at Theobald's,condescends to mention William Shakespeare at the tail end of the men ofnote of Elizabeth's time. The ocean is not more boundless, he affirms,than the number of men of note of her time; and after he has finishedwith the statesmen ("an exquisite statesman for his own ends was RobertEarl of Leicester, and for his Countries good, Sir William Cecill, LordBurleigh"), the seamen, the great commanders, the learned gentlemen andwriters (among them Roger Askam, who had sometime been schoolmaster toQueen Elizabeth, but, taking too great delight in gaming and cock-fighting, lived and died in mean estate), the learned divines andpreachers, he concludes: "After such men, it might be thought ridiculousto speak of Stage-players; but seeing excellency in the meanest thingsdeserve remembring, and Roscius the Comedian is recorded in History withsuch commendation, it may be allowed us to do the like with some of ourNation. Richard Bourbidge and Edward Allen, two such actors as no agemust ever look to see the like; and to make their Comedies compleat,Richard Tarleton, who for the Part called the Clowns Part, never had hismatch, never will have. For Writers of Playes, and such as have beenplayers themselves, William Shakespeare and Benjamin Johnson haveespecially left their Names recommended to posterity."

Richard Bourbidge (or Burbadge) was the first of the great English tragicactors, and was the original of the greater number of Shakespeare'sheroes--Hamlet, Othello, Lear, Shylock, Macbeth, Richard III., Romeo,Brutus, etc. Dick Tarleton, one of the privileged scapegraces of sociallife, was regarded by his contemporaries as the most witty of clowns andcomedians. The clown was a permitted character in the old theatres,and intruded not only between the acts, but even into the play itself,with his quips and antics. It is probable that he played the part ofclown, grave-digger, etc., in Shakespeare's comedies, and no doubt tookliberties with his parts. It is thought that part of Hamlet's advice tothe players--"and let those that play your clowns speak no more than isset down for them," etc.--was leveled at Tarleton.

The question is often asked, but I consider it an idle one, whetherShakespeare was appreciated in his own day as he is now. That the age,was unable to separate him from itself, and see his great stature, isprobable; that it enjoyed him with a sympathy to which we are strangersthere is no doubt. To us he is inexhaustible. The more we study him,the more are we astonished at his multiform genius. In our complexcivilization, there is no development of passion, or character, or traitof human nature, no social evolution, that does not find expressionsomewhere in those marvelous plays; and yet it is impossible for us toenter into a full, sympathetic enjoyment of those plays unless we can insome measure recreate for ourselves the atmosphere in which they werewritten. To superficial observation great geniuses come into the worldat rare intervals in history, in a manner independent of what we call theprogress of the race. It may be so; but the form the genius shall takeis always determined by the age in which it appears, and its expressionis shaped by the environments. Acquaintance with the Bedouin desert lifeof today, which has changed little for three thousand years, illuminesthe book of Job like an electric light. Modern research into Hellenicand Asiatic life has given a new meaning to the Iliad and the Odyssey,and greatly enhanced our enjoyment of them. A fair comprehension of theDivina Commedia is impossible without some knowledge of the factions thatrent Florence; of the wars of Guelf and Ghibelline; of the spirit thatbanished Dante, and gave him an humble tomb in Ravenna instead of asepulchre in the pantheon of Santa Croce. Shakespeare was a child of hisage; it had long been preparing for him; its expression culminated inhim. It was essentially a dramatic age. He used the accumulatedmaterials of centuries. He was playwright as well as poet. His varietyand multiform genius cannot otherwise be accounted for. He called in thecoinage of many generations, and reissued it purified and unalloyed,stamped in his own mint. There was a Hamlet probably, there werecertainly Romeos and Juliets, on the stage before Shakespeare. In himwere received the imaginations, the inventions, the aspirations, thesuperstitions, the humors, the supernatural intimations; in him met theconverging rays of the genius of his age, as in a lens, to be sent onwardthenceforth in an ever-broadening stream of light.

It was his fortune to live not only in a dramatic age, but in atransition age, when feudalism was passing away, but while its shows andsplendors could still be seriously comprehended. The dignity that dothhedge a king was so far abated that royalty could be put upon the stageas a player's spectacle; but the reality of kings and queens and courtpageantry was not so far past that it did not appeal powerfully to theimaginations of the frequenters of the Globe, the Rose, and the Fortune.They had no such feeling as we have in regard to the pasteboard kings andqueens who strut their brief hour before us in anachronic absurdity.But, besides that he wrote in the spirit of his age, Shakespeare wrote inthe language and the literary methods of his time. This is not moreevident in the contemporary poets than in the chroniclers of that day.They all delighted in ingenuities of phrase, in neat turns and conceits;it was a compliment then to be called a "conceited" writer.

Of all the guides to Shakespeare's time, there is none more profitable orentertaining than William Harrison, who wrote for Holinshed's chronicle"The Description of England," as it fell under his eyes from 1577 to1587. Harrison's England is an unfailing mine of information for all thehistorians of the sixteenth century; and in the edition published by theNew Shakespeare Society, and edited, with a wealth of notes andcontemporary references, by Mr. Frederick J. Furnivall, it is a newrevelation of Shakespeare's England to the general reader.

Harrison himself is an interesting character, and trustworthy above thegeneral race of chroniclers. He was born in 1534, or, to use hisexactness of statement, "upon the 18th of April, hora ii, minut 4,Secunde 56, at London, in Cordwainer streete, otherwise called bowe-lane." This year was also remarkable as that in which "King Henry 8polleth his head; after whom his household and nobility, with the rest ofhis subjects do the like." It was the year before Anne Boleyn, haledaway to the Tower, accused, condemned, and executed in the space offourteen days, "with sigheing teares" said to the rough Duke of Norfolk,"Hither I came once my lord, to fetch a crown imperial; but now toreceive, I hope, a crown immortal." In 1544, the boy was at St. Paul'sschool; the litany in the English tongue, by the king's command, was thatyear sung openly in St. Paul's, and we have a glimpse of Harrison withthe other children, enforced to buy those books, walking in generalprocession, as was appointed, before the king went to Boulogne. Harrisonwas a student at both Oxford and Cambridge, taking the degree of bachelorof divinity at the latter in 1569, when he had been an Oxford M.A. ofseven years' standing. Before this he was household chaplain to SirWilliam Brooke, Lord Cobham, who gave him, in 1588-89, the rectory ofRadwinter, in Essex, which he held till his death, in 1593. In 1586 hewas installed canon of Windsor. Between 1559 and 1571 he married MarionIsebrande,--of whom he said in his will, referring to the sometimesupposed unlawfulness of priests' marriages, "by the laws of God I takeand repute in all respects for my true and lawful wife." At Radwinter,the old parson, working in his garden, collected Roman coins, wrote hischronicles, and expressed his mind about the rascally lawyers of Essex,to whom flowed all the wealth of the land. The lawyers in those daysstirred up contentions, and then reaped the profits. "Of all that ever Iknew in Essex," says Harrison, "Denis and Mainford excelled, till John ofLudlow, alias Mason, came in place, unto whom in comparison these twowere but children." This last did so harry a client for four years thatthe latter, still called upon for new fees, "went to bed, and within fourdays made an end of his woeful life, even with care and pensiveness."And after his death the lawyer so handled his son "that there was neversheep shorn in May, so near clipped of his fleece present, as he was ofmany to come." The Welsh were the most litigious people. A Welshmanwould walk up to London bare-legged, carrying his hose on his neck, tosave wear and because he had no change, importune his countrymen till hegot half a dozen writs, with which he would return to molest hisneighbors, though no one of his quarrels was worth the money he paid fora single writ.

The humblest mechanic of England today has comforts and convenienceswhich the richest nobles lacked in Harrison's day, but it wasnevertheless an age of great luxury and extravagance; of brave apparel,costly and showy beyond that of any Continental people, though wanting inrefined taste; and of mighty banquets, with service of massive plate,troops of attendants, and a surfeit of rich food and strong drink.

In this luxury the clergy of Harrison's rank did not share. Harrison waspoor on forty pounds a year. He complains that the clergy were taxedmore than ever, the church having become "an ass whereon every man is toride to market and cast his wallet." They paid tenths and first-fruitsand subsidies, so that out of twenty pounds of a benefice the incumbentdid not reserve more than L 13 6s. 8d. for himself and his family. Theyhad to pay for both prince and laity, and both grumbled at and slanderedthem. Harrison gives a good account of the higher clergy; he says thebishops were loved for their painful diligence in their calling, and thatthe clergy of England were reputed on the Continent as learned divines,skillful in Greek and Hebrew and in the Latin tongue.

There was, however, a scarcity of preachers and ministers in Elizabeth'stime, and their character was not generally high. What could be expectedwhen covetous patrons canceled their debts to their servants by bestowingadvowsons of benefices upon their bakers, butlers, cooks, grooms, pages,and lackeys--when even in the universities there was cheating atelections for scholarships and fellowships, and gifts were for sale!The morals of the clergy were, however, improved by frequent conferences,at which the good were praised and the bad reproved; and theseconferences were "a notable spur unto all the ministers, whereby to applytheir books, which otherwise (as in times past) would give themselves tohawking, hunting, tables, cards, dice, tipling at the ale house,shooting, and other like vanities." The clergy held a social rank withtradespeople; their sons learned trades, and their daughters might go outto service. Jewell says many of them were the "basest sort of people"unlearned, fiddlers, pipers, and what not. "Not a few," says Harrison,"find fault with our threadbare gowns, as if not our patrons but ourwives were the causes of our woe." He thinks the ministers will bebetter when the patrons are better, and he defends the right of theclergy to marry and to leave their goods, if they have any, to theirwidows and children instead of to the church, or to some school oralmshouse. What if their wives are fond, after the decease of theirhusbands, to bestow themselves not so advisedly as their callingrequireth; do not duchesses, countesses, and knights' wives offend in thelike fully so often as they? And Eve, remarks the old philosopher ofRadwinter--"Eve will be Eve, though Adam would say nay."

The apparel of the clergy, at any rate, was more comely and decent thanit ever was in the popish church, when the priests "went either in diverscolors like players, or in garments of light hue, as yellow, red, green,etc.; with their shoes piked, their hair crisped, their girdles armedwith silver; their shoes, spurs, bridles, etc., buckled with like metal;their apparel (for the most part) of silk, and richly furred; their capslaced and buttoned with gold; so that to meet a priest, in those days,was to behold a peacock that spreadeth his tail when he danceth beforethe hen."

Hospitality among the clergy was never better used, and it was increasedby their marriage; for the meat and drink were prepared more orderly andfrugally, the household was better looked to, and the poor oftener fed.There was perhaps less feasting of the rich in bishops' houses, and "itis thought much peradventure, that some bishops in our time do come shortof the ancient gluttony and prodigality of their predecessors;" but thisis owing to the curtailing of their livings, and the excessive priceswhereunto things are grown.

Harrison spoke his mind about dignitaries. He makes a passing referenceto Thomas a Becket as "the old Cocke of Canturburie," who did crow inbehalf of the see of Rome, and the "young cockerels of other sees didimitate his demeanour." He is glad that images, shrines, and tabernaclesare removed out of churches. The stories in glass windows remain onlybecause of the cost of replacing them with white panes. He would like tostop the wakes, guilds, paternities, church-ales, and brides-ales, withall their rioting, and he thinks they could get on very well without thefeasts of apostles, evangelists, martyrs, the holy-days after Christmas,Easter, and Whitsuntide, and those of the Virgin Mary, with the rest."It is a world to see," he wrote of 1552, "how ready the Catholicks areto cast the communion tables out of their churches, which in derisionthey call Oysterboards, and to set up altars whereon to say mass." Andhe tells with sinful gravity this tale of a sacrilegious sow: "Upon the23rd of August, the high altar of Christ Church in Oxford was trimlydecked up after the popish manner and about the middest of evensong,a sow cometh into the quire, and pulled all to the ground; for whichheinous fact, it is said she was afterwards beheaded; but to that I amnot privy." Think of the condition of Oxford when pigs went to mass!Four years after this there was a sickness in England, of which a thirdpart of the people did taste, and many clergymen, who had prayed not tolive after the death of Queen Mary, had their desire, the Lord hearingtheir prayer, says Harrison, "and intending thereby to give his church abreathing time."

There were four classes in England--gentlemen, citizens, yeomen, andartificers or laborers. Besides the nobles, any one can call himself agentleman who can live without work and buy a coat of arms--though someof them "bear a bigger sail than his boat is able to sustain." Thecomplaint of sending abroad youth to be educated is an old one; Harrisonsays the sons of gentlemen went into Italy, and brought nothing home butmere atheism, infidelity, vicious conversation, and ambitious, proudbehavior, and retained neither religion nor patriotism. Among citizenswere the merchants, of whom Harrison thought there were too many; for,like the lawyers, they were no furtherance to the commonwealth, butraised the price of all commodities. In former, free-trade times, sugarwas sixpence a pound, now it is two shillings sixpence; raisins were onepenny, and now sixpence. Not content with the old European trade, theyhave sought out the East and West Indies, and likewise Cathay andTartary, whence they pretend, from their now and then suspicious voyages,they bring home great commodities. But Harrison cannot see that pricesare one whit abated by this enormity, and certainly they carry out ofEngland the best of its wares.

The yeomen are the stable, free men, who for the most part stay in oneplace, working the farms of gentlemen, are diligent, sometimes buy theland of unthrifty gentlemen, educate their sons to the schools and thelaw courts, and leave them money to live without labor. These are themen that made France afraid. Below these are the laborers and men whowork at trades, who have no voice in the commonwealth, and crowds ofyoung serving-men who become old beggars, highway-robbers, idle fellows,and spreaders of all vices. There was a complaint then, as now, that inmany trades men scamped their work, but, on the whole, husbandmen andartificers had never been so good; only there were too many of them, toomany handicrafts of which the country had no need. It appears to be afault all along in history that there are too many of almost every sortof people.

In Harrison's time the greater part of the building in cities and townswas of timber, only a few of the houses of the commonalty being of stone.In an old plate giving a view of the north side of Cheapside, London, in1638, we see little but quaint gable ends and rows of small windows setclose together. The houses are of wood and plaster, each storyoverhanging the other, terminating in sharp pediments; the roofsprojecting on cantilevers, and the windows occupying the whole front ofeach of the lower stories. They presented a lively and gay appearance onholidays, when the pentices of the shop fronts were hung with coloreddraperies, and the balconies were crowded with spectators, and every paneof glass showed a face. In the open country, where timber was scarce,the houses were, between studs, impaneled with clay-red, white, or blue.One of the Spaniards who came over in the suite of Philip remarked thelarge diet in these homely cottages: "These English," quoth he, "havetheir houses made of sticks and dirt, but they fare commonly so well asthe king." "Whereby it appeareth," comments Harrison, "that he likedbetter of our good fare in such coarse cabins, than of their own thindiet in their prince-like habitations and palaces." The timber houseswere covered with tiles; the other sort with straw or reeds. The fairesthouses were ceiled within with mortar and covered with plaster, thewhiteness and evenness of which excited Harrison's admiration. The wallswere hung with tapestry, arras-work, or painted cloth, whereon weredivers histories, or herbs, or birds, or else ceiled with oak. Stoveshad just begun to be used, and only in some houses of the gentry, "whobuild them not to work and feed in, as in Germany and elsewhere, but nowand then to sweat in, as occasion and need shall require." Glass inwindows, which was then good and cheap, and made even in England, hadgenerally taken the place of the lattices and of the horn, and of theberyl which noblemen formerly used in windows. Gentlemen were beginningto build their houses of brick and stone, in stately and magnificentfashion. The furniture of the houses had also grown in a manner "passingdelicacy," and not of the nobility and gentry only, but of the lowestsort. In noblemen's houses there was abundance of arras, rich hangingsof tapestry, and silver vessels, plate often to the value of one thousandand two thousand pounds. The knights, gentlemen, and merchants had greatprovision of tapestry, Turkie work, pewter, brass, fine linen, andcupboards of plate worth perhaps a thousand pounds. Even the inferiorartificers and many farmers had learned also to garnish their cupboardswith plate, their joined beds with silk hangings, and their tables withfine linen--evidences of wealth for which Harrison thanks God andreproaches no man, though he cannot see how it is brought about, when allthings are grown to such excessive prices.

Old men of Radwinter noted three things marvelously altered in Englandwithin their remembrance. The first was the multitude of chimneys latelyerected; whereas in their young days there were not, always except thosein the religious and manor houses, above two or three chimneys in mostupland towns of the realm; each one made his fire against a reredos inthe hall, where he dined and dressed his meat. The second was theamendment in lodging. In their youth they lay upon hard straw palletscovered only with a sheet, and mayhap a dogswain coverlet over them, anda good round log for pillow. If in seven years after marriage a mancould buy a mattress and a sack of chaff to rest his head on, he thoughthimself as well lodged as a lord. Pillows were thought meet only forsick women. As for servants, they were lucky if they had a sheet overthem, for there was nothing under them to keep the straw from prickingtheir hardened hides. The third notable thing was the exchange of treene(wooden) platters into pewter, and wooden spoons into silver or tin.Wooden stuff was plenty, but a good farmer would not have above fourpieces of pewter in his house; with all his frugality, he was unable topay his rent of four pounds without selling a cow or horse. It was atime of idleness, and if a farmer at an alehouse, in a bravery to showwhat he had, slapped down his purse with six shillings in it, all therest together could not match it. But now, says Harrison, though therent of four pounds has improved to forty, the farmer has six or sevenyears' rent, lying by him, to purchase a new term, garnish his cupboardwith pewter, buy three or four feather-beds, coverlets, carpets oftapestry, a silver salt, a nest of bowls for wine, and a dozen spoons.All these things speak of the growing wealth and luxury of the age. Onlya little before this date, in 1568, Lord Buckhurst, who had been orderedto entertain the Cardinal de Chatillon in Queen Elizabeth's palace atSheen, complains of the meanness of the furniture of his rooms.He showed the officers who preceded the cardinal such furniture and stuffas he had, but it did not please them. They wanted plate, he had none;such glass vessels as he had they thought too base. They wanted damaskfor long tables, and he had only linen for a square table, and theyrefused his square table. He gave the cardinal his only unoccupiedtester and bedstead, and assigned to the bishop the bedstead upon whichhis wife's waiting-women did lie, and laid them on the ground. He lentthe cardinal his own basin and ewer, candlesticks from his own table,drinking-glasses, small cushions, and pots for the kitchen. My Lord ofLeicester sent down two pair of fine sheets for the cardinal and one pairfor the bishop.

Harrison laments three things in his day: the enhancing of rents, thedaily oppression of poor tenants by the lords of manors, and the practiceof usury--a trade brought in by the Jews, but now practiced by almostevery Christian, so that he is accounted a fool that doth lend his moneyfor nothing. He prays the reader to help him, in a lawful manner, tohang up all those that take cent. per cent. for money. Anothergrievance, and most sorrowful of all, is that many gentlemen, men of goodport and countenance, to the injury of the farmers and commonalty,actually turn Braziers, butchers, tanners, sheep-masters, and woodmen.Harrison also notes the absorption of lands by the rich; the decay ofhouses in the country, which comes of the eating up of the poor by therich; the increase of poverty; the difficulty a poor man had to live onan acre of ground; his forced contentment with bread made of oats andbarley, and the divers places that formerly had good tenants and now werevacant, hop-yards and gardens.

Harrison says it is not for him to describe the palaces of QueenElizabeth; he dare hardly peep in at her gates. Her houses are of brickand stone, neat and well situated, but in good masonry not to be comparedto those of Henry VIII's building; they are rather curious to the eye,like paper-works, than substantial for continuance. Her court is moremagnificent than any other in Europe, whether you regard the rich andinfinite furniture of the household, the number of officers, or thesumptuous entertainments. And the honest chronicler is so struck withadmiration of the virtuous beauty of the maids of honor that he cannottell whether to award preeminence to their amiable countenances or totheir costliness of attire, between which there is daily conflict andcontention. The courtiers of both sexes have the use of sundry languagesand an excellent vein of writing. Would to God the rest of their livesand conversation corresponded with these gifts! But the courtiers,the most learned, are the worst men when they come abroad that any manshall hear or read of. Many of the gentlewomen have sound knowledge ofGreek and Latin, and are skillful in Spanish, Italian, and French; andthe noblemen even surpass them. The old ladies of the court avoididleness by needlework, spinning of silk, or continual reading of theHoly Scriptures or of histories, and writing diverse volumes of theirown, or translating foreign works into English or Latin; and the youngladies, when they are not waiting on her majesty, "in the mean time applytheir lutes, citherns, pricksong, and all kinds of music." The eldersare skillful in surgery and the distillation of waters, and sundry otherartificial practices pertaining to the ornature and commendation of theirbodies; and when they are at home they go into the kitchen and supply anumber of delicate dishes of their own devising, mostly after Portuguesereceipts; and they prepare bills of fare (a trick lately taken up) togive a brief rehearsal of all the dishes of every course. I do not knowwhether this was called the "higher education of women" at the time.

In every office of the palaces is a Bible, or book of acts of the church,or chronicle, for the use of whoever comes in, so that the court looksmore like a university than a palace. Would to God the houses of thenobles were ruled like the queen's! The nobility are followed by greattroops of serving-men in showy liveries; and it is a goodly sight to seethem muster at court, which, being filled with them, "is made like to theshow of a peacock's tail in the full beauty, or of some meadow garnishedwith infinite kinds and diversity of pleasant flowers." Such was thediscipline of Elizabeth's court that any man who struck another within ithad his right hand chopped off by the executioner in a most horriblemanner.

The English have always had a passion for gardens and orchards.In the Roman time grapes abounded and wine was plenty, but the culturedisappeared after the Conquest. From the time of Henry IV. to HenryVIII. vegetables were little used, but in Harrison's day the use ofmelons, pompions, radishes, cucumbers, cabbages, turnips, and the likewas revived. They had beautiful flower-gardens annexed to the houses,wherein were grown also rare and medicinal herbs; it was a wonder to seehow many strange herbs, plants, and fruits were daily brought from theIndies, America and the Canaries. Every rich man had great store offlowers, and in one garden might be seen from three hundred to fourhundred medicinal herbs. Men extol the foreign herbs to the neglect ofthe native, and especially tobacco, "which is not found of so greatefficacy as they write." In the orchards were plums, apples, pears,walnuts, filberts; and in noblemen's orchards store of strange fruit-apricots, almonds, peaches, figs, and even in some oranges, lemons, andcapers. Grafters also were at work with their artificial mixtures,"dallying, as it were, with nature and her course, as if her whole tradewere perfectly known unto them: of hard fruits they will make soft, ofsour sweet, of sweet yet more delicate; bereaving also some of theirkernels, others of their cores, and finally endowing them with the flavorof musk, amber, or sweet spices at their pleasure." Gardeners turnannual into perpetual herbs, and such pains are they at that they evenused dish-water for plants. The Gardens of Hesperides are surely notequal to these. Pliny tells of a rose that had sixty leaves on one bud,but in 1585 there was a rose in Antwerp that had one hundred and eightyleaves; and Harrison might have had a slip of it for ten pounds, but hethought it a "tickle hazard." In his own little garden, of not abovethree hundred square feet, he had near three hundred samples, and not oneof them of the common, or usually to be had.

Our kin beyond sea have always been stout eaters of solid food, and inElizabeth's time their tables were more plentifully laden than those ofany other nation. Harrison scientifically accounts for their inordinateappetite. "The situation of our region," he says, "lying near unto thenorth, does cause the heat of our stomachs to be of somewhat greaterforce; therefore our bodies do crave a little more ample nourishment thanthe inhabitants of the hotter regions are accustomed withal, whosedigestive force is not altogether so vehement, because their internalheat is not so strong as ours, which is kept in by the coldness of theair, that from time to time (specially in winter) doth environ ourbodies." The north Britons in old times were accustomed often to greatabstinence, and lived when in the woods on roots and herbs. They usedsometimes a confection, "whereof so much as a bean would qualify theirhunger above common expectation"; but when they had nothing to qualify itwith, they crept into the marsh water up to their chins, and thereremained a long time, "only to qualify the heat of their stomachs byviolence."

In Harrison's day the abstemious Welsh had learned to eat like theEnglish, and the Scotch exceeded the latter in "over much anddistemperate gormandize." The English eat all they can buy, there beingno restraint of any meat for religion's sake or for public order. Thewhite meats--milk, butter, and cheese--though very dear, are reputed asgood for inferior people, but the more wealthy feed upon the flesh of allsorts of cattle and all kinds of fish. The nobility ("whose cooks arefor the most part musical-headed Frenchmen and strangers ") exceed innumber of dishes and change of meat. Every day at dinner there is beef,mutton, veal, lamb, kid, pork, conie, capon, pig, or as many of these asthe season yielded, besides deer and wildfowl, and fish, and sundrydelicacies "wherein the sweet hand of the seafaring Portingale is notwanting." The food was brought in commonly in silver vessels at tablesof the degree of barons, bishops, and upwards, and referred first to theprincipal personage, from whom it passed to the lower end of the table,the guests not eating of all, but choosing what each liked; and nobodystuffed himself. The dishes were then sent to the servants, and theremains of the feast went to the poor, who lay waiting at the gates ingreat numbers.

Drink was served in pots, goblets, jugs, and bowls of silver innoblemen's houses, and also in Venice glasses. It was not set upon thetable, but the cup was brought to each one who thirsted; he called forsuch a cup of drink as he wished, and delivered it again to one of theby-standers, who made it clean by pouring out what remained, and restoredit to the sideboard. This device was to prevent great drinking, whichmight ensue if the full pot stood always at the elbow. But this orderwas not used in noblemen's halls, nor in any order under the degree ofknight or squire of great revenue. It was a world to see how the noblespreferred to gold and silver, which abounded, the new Venice glass,whence a great trade sprang up with Murano that made many rich. Thepoorest even would have glass, but home-made--a foolish expense, for theglass soon went to bits, and the pieces turned to no profit. Harrisonwanted the philosopher's stone to mix with this molten glass and toughenit.

There were multitudes of dependents fed at the great houses, andeverywhere, according to means, a wide-open hospitality was maintained.Froude gives a notion of the style of living in earlier times by citingthe details of a feast given when George Neville, brother of Warwick theking-maker, was made archbishop of York. There were present, includingservants, thirty-five hundred persons. These are a few of the thingsused at the banquet: three hundred quarters of wheat, three hundred tunsof ale, one hundred and four tuns of wine, eighty oxen, three thousandgeese, two thousand pigs,--four thousand conies, four thousandheronshaws, four thousand venison pasties cold and five hundred hot, fourthousand cold tarts, four thousand cold custards, eight seals, fourporpoises, and so on.

The merchants and gentlemen kept much the same tables as the nobles,especially at feasts, but when alone were content with a few dishes.They also desired the dearest food, and would have no meat from thebutcher's but the most delicate, while their list of fruits, cakes,Gates, and outlandish confections is as long as that at any modernbanquet. Wine ran in excess. There were used fifty-six kinds of lightwines, like the French, and thirty of the strong sorts, like the Italianand Eastern. The stronger the wine, the better it was liked. Thestrongest and best was in old times called theologicum, because it washad from the clergy and religious men, to whose houses the laity senttheir bottles to be filled, sure that the religious would neither drinknor be served with the worst; for the merchant would have thought hissoul should have gone straightway to the devil if he had sent them anybut the best. The beer served at noblemen's tables was commonly a yearold, and sometimes two, but this age was not usual. In householdsgenerally it was not under a month old, for beer was liked stale if itwere not sour, while bread was desired as new as possible so that it wasnot hot.

The husbandman and artificer ate such meat as they could easiest come byand have most quickly ready; yet the banquets of the trades in Londonwere not inferior to those of the nobility. The husbandmen, however,exceed in profusion, and it is incredible to tell what meat is consumedat bridals, purifications, and such like odd meetings; but each guestbrought his own provision, so that the master of the house had only toprovide bread, drink, houseroom, and fire. These lower classes Harrisonfound very friendly at their tables--merry without malice, plain withoutItalian or French subtlety--so that it would do a man good to be incompany among them; but if they happen to stumble upon a piece of venisonor a cup of wine or very strong beer, they do not stick to comparethemselves with the lord-mayor--and there is no public man in any city ofEurope that may compare with him in port and countenance during the termof his office.

Harrison commends the great silence used at the tables of the wiser sort,and generally throughout the realm, and likewise the moderate eating anddrinking. But the poorer countrymen do babble somewhat at table, andmistake ribaldry and loquacity for wit and wisdom, and occasionally arecup-shotten; and what wonder, when they who have hard diet and smalldrink at home come to such opportunities at a banquet! The wealthiersort in the country entertain their visitors from afar, however long theystay, with as hearty a welcome the last day as the first; and thecountrymen contrast this hospitality with that of their London cousins,who joyfully receive them the first day, tolerate them the second, wearyof them the third, and wish 'em at the devil after four days.

The gentry usually ate wheat bread, of which there were four kinds, andthe poor generally bread made of rye, barley, and even oats and acorns.Corn was getting so dear, owing to the forestallers and middlemen, that,says the historian, "if the world last a while after this rate, wheat andrye will be no grain for poor men to feed on; and some catterpillers[two-legged speculators] there are that can say so much already."

The great drink of the realm was, of course, beer (and it is to be notedthat a great access of drunkenness came into England with the importationmuch later of Holland gin) made from barley, hops, and water, and uponthe brewing of it Harrison dwells lovingly, and devotes many pages to adescription of the process, especially as "once in a month practiced bymy wife and her maid servants." They ground eight bushels of malt, addedhalf a bushel of wheat meal, half a bushel of oat meal, poured in eightygallons of water, then eighty gallons more, and a third eighty gallons,and boiled with a couple of pounds of hops. This, with a few spicesthrown in, made three hogsheads of good beer, meet for a poor man who hadonly forty pounds a year. This two hundred gallons of beer costaltogether twenty shillings; but although he says his wife brewed it"once in a month," whether it lasted a whole month the parson does notsay. He was particular about the water used: the Thames is best, themarsh worst, and clear spring water next worst; "the fattest standingwater is always the best." Cider and perry were made in some parts ofEngland, and a delicate sort of drink in Wales, called metheglin; butthere was a kind of "swish-swash" made in Essex from honey-combs andwater, called mead, which differed from the metheglin as chalk fromcheese.

In Shakespeare's day much less time was spent in eating and drinking thanformerly, when, besides breakfast in the forenoon and dinners, there were"beverages" or "nuntion" after dinner, and supper before going to bed--"a toie brought in by hardie Canutus," who was a gross feeder. Generallythere were, except for the young who could not fast till dinnertime, onlytwo meals daily, dinner and supper. Yet the Normans had brought in thehabit of sitting long at the table--a custom not yet altogether abated,since the great people, especially at banquets, sit till two or threeo'clock in the afternoon; so that it is a hard matter to rise and go toevening prayers and return in time for supper.

Harrison does not make much account of the early meal called "breakfast";but Froude says that in Elizabeth's time the common hour of rising, inthe country, was four o'clock, summer and winter, and that breakfast wasat five, after which the laborers went to work and the gentlemen tobusiness. The Earl and Countess of Northumberland breakfasted togetherand alone at seven. The meal consisted of a quart of ale, a quart ofwine, and a chine of beef; a loaf of bread is not mentioned, but we hope(says Froude) it may be presumed. The gentry dined at eleven and suppedat five. The merchants took dinner at noon, and, in London, supped atsix. The university scholars out of term ate dinner at ten. Thehusbandmen dined at high noon, and took supper at seven or eight. As forthe poorer sort, it is needless to talk of their order of repast, forthey dined and supped when they could. The English usually began mealswith the grossest food and ended with the most delicate, taking first themild wines and ending with the hottest; but the prudent Scot didotherwise, making his entrance with the best, so that he might leave theworse to the menials.

I will close this portion of our sketch of English manners with anextract from the travels of Hentzner, who visited England in 1598, andsaw the great queen go in state to chapel at Greenwich, and afterwardswitnessed the laying of the table for her dinner. It was on Sunday.The queen was then in her sixty-fifth year, and "very majestic," as shewalked in the splendid procession of barons, earls, and knights of thegarter: "her face, oblong, fair, but wrinkled; her eyes small, yet blackand pleasant; her nose a little hooked; her lips narrow, and her teethblack (a defect the English seem subject to from their great use ofsugar). She had in her ears two pearls with very rich drops; she worefalse hair, and that red; upon her head she had a small crown, reportedto be made of some of the gold of the celebrated Lunebourg table. Herbosom was uncovered, as all the English ladies have it till they marry;and she had on a necklace of exceeding fine jewels; her hands were small,her fingers long, and her stature neither small nor low; her air wasstately, her manner of speaking mild and obliging. That day she wasdressed in white silk, bordered with pearls of the size of beans, andover it a mantle of black silk, shot with silver threads; her train wasvery long, and the end of it borne by a marchioness; instead of a chainshe had an oblong collar of gold and jewels." As she swept on in thismagnificence, she spoke graciously first to one, then to another, andalways in the language of any foreigner she addressed; whoever spoke toher kneeled, and wherever she turned her face, as she was going along,everybody fell down on his knees. When she pulled off her glove to giveher hand to be kissed, it was seen to be sparkling with rings and jewels.The ladies of the court, handsome and well shaped, followed, dressed forthe most part in white; and on either side she was guarded by fiftygentlemen pensioners with gilt battle-axes. In the ante-chapel, whereshe graciously received petitions, there was an acclaim of "Long liveQueen Elizabeth!" to which she answered, "I thank you, my good people."The music in the chapel was excellent, and the whole service was over inhalf an hour. This is Hentzner's description of the setting out of hertable:

"A gentleman entered the room bearing a rod, and along with him anotherwho had a table-cloth, which, after they had both kneeled three times,he spread upon the table; and after kneeling again they both retired.Then came two others, one with the rod again, the other with a salt-cellar, a plate, and bread; and when they had kneeled as the others haddone, and placed what was brought upon the table, they two retired withthe same ceremonies performed by the first. At last came an unmarriedlady (we were told she was a countess) and along with her a married one,bearing a tasting-knife; the former was dressed in white silk, who, whenshe had prostrated herself three times, in the most graceful mannerapproached the table, and rubbed the plates with bread and salt, with asmuch awe as if the Queen had been present. When they had waited there alittle while the Yeomen of the Guard entered, bare-headed, clothed inscarlet, with a golden rose upon their backs, bringing in at each turn acourse of twenty-four dishes, served in plate, most of it gilt; thesedishes were received by a gentleman in the same order they were brought,and placed upon the table, while the Lady Taster gave to each of theguard a mouthful to eat, of the particular dish he had brought, for fearof, any poison. During the time that this guard, which consists of thetallest and stoutest men that can be found in all England, beingcarefully selected for this service, were bringing dinner, twelvetrumpets and two kettle-drums made the hall ring for half an hourtogether. At the end of all this ceremonial, a number of unmarriedladies appeared, who with particular solemnity lifted the meat off thetable and conveyed it into the Queen's inner and more private chamber,where, after she had chosen for herself, the rest goes to the Ladies ofthe court."

The queen dined and supped alone, with very few attendants.

II

We now approach perhaps the most important matter in this world, namely,dress. In nothing were the increasing wealth and extravagance of theperiod more shown than in apparel. And in it we are able to study theorigin of the present English taste for the juxtaposition of striking anduncomplementary colors. In Coryat's "Crudities," 1611, we have anEnglishman's contrast of the dress of the Venetians and the English.The Venetians adhered, without change, to their decent fashion,a thousand years old, wearing usually black: the slender doublet madeclose to the body, without much quilting; the long hose plain, the jerkinalso black--but all of the most costly stuffs Christendom can furnish,satin and taffetas, garnished with the best lace. Gravity and good tastecharacterized their apparel. "In both these things," says Coryat, "theydiffer much from us Englishmen. For whereas they have but one color,we use many more than are in the rainbow, all the most light, garish,and unseemly colors that are in the world. Also for fashion we are muchinferior to them. For we wear more fantastical fashions than any nationunder the sun doth, the French only excepted." On festival days, inprocessions, the senators wore crimson damask gowns, with flaps ofcrimson velvet cast over their left shoulders; and the Venetian knightsdiffered from the other gentlemen, for under their black damask gowns,with long sleeves, they wore red apparel, red silk stockings, and redpantofles.

Andrew Boord, in 1547, attempting to describe the fashions of hiscountrymen, gave up the effort in sheer despair over the variety andfickleness of costume, and drew a naked man with a pair of shears in onehand and a piece of cloth in the other, to the end that he should shapehis apparel as he himself liked; and this he called an Englishman. Eventhe gentle Harrison, who gives Boord the too harsh character of a lewdpopish hypocrite and ungracious priest, admits that he was not void ofjudgment in this; and he finds it easier to inveigh against the enormity,the fickleness, and the fantasticality of the English attire than todescribe it. So unstable is the fashion, he says, that today the Spanishguise is in favor; tomorrow the French toys are most fine and delectable;then the high German apparel is the go; next the Turkish manner is bestliked, the Morisco gowns, the Barbary sleeves, and the short Frenchbreeches; in a word, "except it were a dog in a doublet, you shall notsee any so disguised as are my countrymen in England."

This fantastical folly was in all degrees, from the courtier down to thetarter. "It is a world to see the costliness and the curiosity, theexcess and the vanity, the pomp and the bravery, the change and thevariety, and finally the fickleness and the folly that is in all degrees;insomuch that nothing is more constant in England than inconstancy ofattire. So much cost upon the body, so little upon souls; how many suitsof apparel hath the one, or how little furniture hath the other!""And how men and women worry the poor tailors, with endless fittings andsending back of garments, and trying on!" "Then must the long seams ofour hose be set with a plumb line, then we puff, then we blow, andfinally sweat till we drop, that our clothes may stand well upon us."

The barbers were as cunning in variety as the tailors. Sometimes thehead was polled; sometimes the hair was curled, and then suffered to growlong like a woman's locks, and many times cut off, above or under theears, round as by a wooden dish. And so with the beards: some shavedfrom the chin, like the Turks; some cut short, like the beard of theMarquis Otto; some made round, like a rubbing-brush; some peaked, othersgrown long. If a man have a lean face, the Marquis Otto's cut makes itbroad; if it be platterlike, the long, slender beard makes it seemnarrow; "if he be weasel-beaked, then much hair left on the cheeks willmake the owner look big like a bowdled hen, and so grim as a goose."Some courageous gentlemen wore in their ears rings of gold and stones,to improve God's work, which was otherwise set off by monstrous quiltedand stuffed doublets, that puffed out the figure like a barrel.

There is some consolation, though I don't know why, in the knowledge thatwriters have always found fault with women's fashions, as they do today.Harrison says that the women do far exceed the lightness of the men;"such staring attire as in time past was supposed meet for lighthousewives only is now become an habit for chaste and sober matrons."And he knows not what to say of their doublets, with pendant pieces onthe breast full of jags and cuts; their "galligascons," to make theirdresses stand out plumb round; their farthingales and divers coloredstockings. "I have met," he says, "with some of these trulls in Londonso disguised that it hath passed my skill to determine whether they weremen or women." Of all classes the merchants were most to be commendedfor rich but sober attire; "but the younger sort of their wives, both inattire and costly housekeeping, cannot tell when and how to make an end,as being women indeed in whom all kind of curiosity is to be found andseen." Elizabeth's time, like our own, was distinguished by newfashionable colors, among which are mentioned a queer greenish-yellow,a pease-porridge-tawny, a popinjay of blue, a lusty gallant, and the"devil in the hedge." These may be favorites still, for aught I know.

Mr. Furnivall quotes a description of a costume of the period, from themanuscript of Orazio Busino's "Anglipotrida." Busino was the chaplain ofPiero Contarina, the Venetian ambassador to James I, in 1617. Thechaplain was one day stunned with grief over the death of the butler ofthe embassy; and as the Italians sleep away grief, the French sing, theGermans drink, and the English go to plays to be rid of it,the Venetians, by advice, sought consolation at the Fortune Theatre;and there a trick was played upon old Busino, by placing him among a bevyof young women, while the concealed ambassador and the secretary enjoyedthe joke. "These theatres," says Busino, "are frequented by a number ofrespectable and handsome ladies, who come freely and seat themselvesamong the men without the slightest hesitation . . . . Scarcely was Iseated ere a very elegant dame, but in a mask, came and placed herselfbeside me . . . . She asked me for my address both in French andEnglish; and, on my turning a deaf ear, she determined to honor me byshowing me some fine diamonds on her fingers, repeatedly taking off nofewer than three gloves, which were worn one over the other . . . .This lady's bodice was of yellow satin, richly embroidered,her petticoat--[It is a trifle in human progress, perhaps scarcely worthnoting, that the "round gown," that is, an entire skirt, not open infront and parting to show the under petticoat, did not come into fashiontill near the close of the eighteenth century.]--of gold tissue withstripes, her robe of red velvet with a raised pile, lined with yellowmuslin with broad stripes of pure gold. She wore an apron of point laceof various patterns; her headtire was highly perfumed, and the collar ofwhite satin beneath the delicately wrought ruff struck me as exceedinglypretty." It was quite in keeping with the manners of the day for a ladyof rank to have lent herself to this hoax of the chaplain.

Van Meteren, a Netherlander, 1575, speaks also of the astonishing changeor changeableness in English fashions, but says the women are welldressed and modest, and they go about the streets without any covering ofmantle, hood, or veil; only the married women wear a hat in the streetand in the house; the unmarried go without a hat; but ladies ofdistinction have lately learned to cover their faces with silken masksor vizards, and to wear feathers. The English, he notes, change theirfashions every year, and when they go abroad riding or traveling they dontheir best clothes, contrary to the practice of other nations. Anotherforeigner, Jacob Rathgeb, 1592, says the English go dressed in exceedingfine clothes, and some will even wear velvet in the street, when theyhave not at home perhaps a piece of dry bread. "The lords and pages ofthe royal court have a stately, noble air, but dress more after theFrench fashion, only they wear short cloaks and sometimes Spanish caps."

Harrison's arraignment of the English fashions of his day may beconsidered as almost commendative beside the diatribes of the old PuritanPhilip Stubbes, in "The Anatomie of Abuses," 1583. The English languageis strained for words hot and rude enough to express his indignation,contempt, and fearful expectation of speedy judgments. The men escapehis hands with scarcely less damage than the women. First he wreaks hisindignation upon the divers kinds of hats, stuck full of feathers,of various colors, "ensigns of vanity," "fluttering sails and featheredflags of defiance to virtue"; then upon the monstrous ruffs that standout a quarter of a yard from the neck. As the devil, in the fullness ofhis malice, first invented these ruffs, so has he found out two stays tobear up this his great kingdom of ruffs--one is a kind of liquid matterthey call starch; the other is a device made of wires, for an under-propper. Then there are shirts of cambric, holland, and lawn, wroughtwith fine needle-work of silk and curiously stitched, costing sometimesas much as five pounds. Worse still are the monstrous doublets, reachingdown to the middle of the thighs, so hard quilted, stuffed, bombasted,and sewed that the wearer can hardly stoop down in them. Below these arethe gally-hose of silk, velvet, satin, and damask, reaching below theknees. So costly are these that "now it is a small matter to bestowtwenty nobles, ten pound, twenty pound, fortie pound, yea a hundred poundof one pair of Breeches. (God be merciful unto us!) "To these gay hosethey add nether-socks, curiously knit with open seams down the leg, withquirks and clocks about the ankles, and sometimes interlaced with goldand silver thread as is wonderful to behold. Time has been when a mancould clothe his whole body for the price of these nether-socks." Satanwas further let loose in the land by reason of cork shoes and fineslippers, of all colors, carved, cut, and stitched with silk, and lacedon with gold and silver, which went flipping and flapping up and down inthe dirt. The jerkins and cloaks are of all colors and fashions; someshort, reaching to the knee; others dragging on the ground; red, white,black, violet, yellow, guarded, laced, and faced; hanged with points andtassels of gold, silver, and silk. The hilts of daggers, rapiers, andswords are gilt thrice over, and have scabbards of velvet. And all thiswhile the poor lie in London streets upon pallets of straw, or else inthe mire and dirt, and die like dogs!"

Stubbes was a stout old Puritan, bent upon hewing his way to heaventhrough all the allurements of this world, and suspecting a devil inevery fair show. I fear that he looked upon woman as only a vain andtrifling image, a delusive toy, away from whom a man must set his face.Shakespeare, who was country-bred when he came up to London, and livedprobably on the roystering South Side, near the theatres and bear-gardens, seems to have been impressed with the painted faces of thewomen. It is probable that only town-bred women painted. Stubbesdeclares that the women of England color their faces with oils, liquors,unguents, and waters made to that end, thinking to make themselves fairerthan God made them--a presumptuous audacity to make God untrue in hisword; and he heaps vehement curses upon the immodest practice. To thisfollows the trimming and tricking of their heads, the laying out theirhair to show, which is curled, crisped, and laid out on wreaths andborders from ear to ear. Lest it should fall down it is under-proppedwith forks, wires, and what not. On the edges of their bolstered hair(for it standeth crested round about their frontiers, and hanging overtheir faces like pendices with glass windows on every side) is laid greatwreaths of gold and silver curiously wrought. But this is not the worstnor the tenth part, for no pen is able to describe the wickedness."The women use great ruffs and neckerchers of holland, lawn, camerick,and such cloth, as the greatest thread shall not be so big as the leasthair that is: then, lest they should fall down, they are smeared andstarched in the Devil's liquor, I mean Starch; after that dried withgreat diligence, streaked, patted and rubbed very nicely, and so appliedto their goodly necks, and, withall, under-propped with supportasses,the stately arches of pride; beyond all this they have a further fetch,nothing inferior to the rest; as, namely, three or four degrees of minorruffs, placed gradatim, step by step, one beneath another, and all underthe Master devil ruff. The skirts, then, of these great ruffs are longand side every way, pleted and crested full curiously, God wot."

Time will not serve us to follow old Stubbes into his particularinquisition of every article of woman's attire, and his hearty damnationof them all and several. He cannot even abide their carrying of nosegaysand posies of flowers to smell at, since the palpable odors and fumes ofthese do enter the brain to degenerate the spirit and allure to vice.They must needs carry looking-glasses with them; "and good reason," saysStubbes, savagely, "for else how could they see the devil in them? for nodoubt they are the devil's spectacles [these women] to allure us to prideand consequently to destruction forever." And, as if it were not enoughto be women, and the devil's aids, they do also have doublets andjerkins, buttoned up the breast, and made with wings, welts, and pinionson the shoulder points, as man's apparel is, for all the world. We takereluctant leave of this entertaining woman-hater, and only stay to quotefrom him a "fearful judgment of God, shewed upon a gentlewoman of Antwerpof late, even the 27th of May, 1582," which may be as profitable to readnow as it was then: "This gentlewoman being a very rich Merchant man'sdaughter: upon a time was invited to a bridal, or wedding, which wassolemnized in that Toune, against which day she made great preparation,for the pluming herself in gorgeous array, that as her body was mostbeautiful, fair, and proper, so her attire in every respect might becorrespondent to the same. For the accomplishment whereof she curled herhair, she dyed her locks, and laid them out after the best manner, shecolored her face with waters and Ointments: But in no case could she getany (so curious and dainty she was) that could starch, and set her Ruffsand Neckerchers to her mind wherefore she sent for a couple ofLaundresses, who did the best they could to please her humors, but in anywise they could not. Then fell she to swear and tear, to curse and damn,casting the Ruffs under feet, and wishing that the Devil might take herwhen she wear any of those Neckerchers again. In the meantime (throughthe sufference of God) the Devil transforming himself into the form of ayoung man, as brave and proper as she in every point of outwardappearance, came in, feigning himself to be a wooer or suitor unto her.And seeing her thus agonized, and in such a pelting chase, he demanded ofher the cause thereof, who straightway told him (as women can concealnothing that lieth upon their stomachs) how she was abused in the settingof her Ruffs, which thing being heard of him, he promised to please hermind, and thereto took in hand the setting of her Ruffs, which heperformed to her great contentation and liking, in so much as she lookingherself in a glass (as the Devil bade her) became greatly enamoured ofhim. This done, the young man kissed her, in the doing whereof shewrithe her neck in, sunder, so she died miserably, her body beingmetamorphosed into black and blue colors, most ugglesome to behold, andher face (which before was so amorous) became most deformed, and fearfulto look upon. This being known, preparaunce was made for her burial,a rich coffin was provided, and her fearful body was laid therein, and itcovered very sumptuously. Four men immediately assayed to lift up thecorpse, but could not move it; then six attempted the like, but could notonce stir it from the place where it stood. Whereat the standers-bymarveling, caused the coffin to be opened to see the cause thereof.Where they found the body to be taken away, and a black Cat very lean anddeformed sitting in the coffin, setting of great Ruffs, and frizzling ofhair, to the great fear and wonder of all beholders."

Better than this pride which forerunneth destruction, in the opinion ofStubbes, is the habit of the Brazilian women, who "esteem so little ofapparel" that they rather choose to go naked than be thought to be proud.

As I read the times of Elizabeth, there was then greater prosperity andenjoyment of life among the common people than fifty or a hundred yearslater. Into the question of the prices of labor and of food, which Mr.Froude considers so fully in the first chapter of his history, I shallnot enter any further than to remark that the hardness of the laborer'slot, who got, mayhap, only twopence a day, is mitigated by the fact thatfor a penny he could buy a pound of meat which now costs a shilling.In two respects England has greatly changed for the traveler, from thesixteenth to the eighteenth century--in its inns and its roads.

In the beginning of Elizabeth's reign travelers had no choice but to rideon horseback or to walk. Goods were transported on strings of pack-horses. When Elizabeth rode into the city from her residence atGreenwich, she placed herself behind her lord chancellor, on a pillion.The first improvement made was in the construction of a rude wagon a cartwithout springs, the body resting solidly on the axles. In such avehicle Elizabeth rode to the opening of her fifth Parliament. In 1583,on a certain day, Sir Harry Sydney entered Shrewsbury in his wagon, "withhis trompeter blowynge, verey joyfull to behold and see." Even suchconveyances fared hard on the execrable roads of the period. Down to theend of the seventeenth century most of the country roads were merelybroad ditches, water-worn and strewn with loose stones. In 1640 QueenHenrietta was four weary days dragging over the road from Dover toLondon, the best in England. Not till the close of the sixteenth centurywas the wagon used, and then rarely. Fifty years later stage-wagons ran,with some regularity, between London and Liverpool; and before the closeof the seventeenth century the stagecoach, a wonderful invention, whichhad been used in and about London since 1650, was placed on threeprincipal roads of the kingdom. It averaged two to three miles an hour.In the reign of Charles II. a Frenchman who landed at Dover was drawn upto London in a wagon with six horses in a line, one after the other.Our Venetian, Busino, who went to Oxford in the coach with the ambassadorin 1617, was six days in going one hundred and fifty miles, as the coachoften stuck in the mud, and once broke down. So bad were the mainthoroughfares, even, that markets were sometimes inaccessible for monthstogether, and the fruits of the earth rotted in one place, while therewas scarcity not many miles distant.

But this difficulty of travel and liability to be detained long on theroad were cheered by good inns, such as did not exist in the worldelsewhere. All the literature of the period reflects lovingly thehomelike delights of these comfortable houses of entertainment. Everylittle village boasted an excellent inn, and in the towns on the greatthoroughfares were sumptuous houses that would accommodate from two tothree hundred guests with their horses. The landlords were not tyrants,as on the Continent, but servants of their guests; and it was, saysHarrison, a world to see how they did contend for the entertainment oftheir guests--as about fineness and change of linen, furniture ofbedding, beauty of rooms, service at the table, costliness of plate,strength of drink, variety of wines, or well-using of horses. Thegorgeous signs at their doors sometimes cost forty pounds. The inns werecheap too, and the landlord let no one depart dissatisfied with his bill.The worst inns were in London, and the tradition has been handed down.But the ostlers, Harrison confesses, did sometimes cheat in the feed, andthey with the tapsters and chamberlains were in league (and thelandlord was not always above suspicion) with highwaymen outside, toascertain if the traveler carried any valuables; so that when he left thehospitable inn he was quite likely to be stopped on the highway andrelieved of his money. The highwayman was a conspicuous character.One of the most romantic of these gentry at one time was a woman namedMary Frith, born in 1585, and known as Moll Cut-Purse. She dressed inmale attire, was an adroit fencer, a bold rider, and a staunch royalist;she once took two hundred gold jacobuses from the Parliamentary GeneralFairfax on Hounslow Heath. She is the chief character in Middleton'splay of the "Roaring Girl"; and after a varied life as a thief, cutpurse,pickpocket, highwayman, trainer of animals, and keeper of a thieves'fence, she died in peace at the age of seventy. To return to the inns,Fyner Morrison, a traveler in 1617, sustains all that Harrison says ofthe inns as the best and cheapest in the world, where the guest shallhave his own pleasure. No sooner does he arrive than the servants run tohim--one takes his horse, another shows him his chamber and lights hisfire, a third pulls off his boots. Then come the host and hostess toinquire what meat he will choose, and he may have their company if helike. He shall be offered music while he eats, and if he be solitary themusicians will give him good-day with music in the morning. In short,"a man cannot more freely command at home, in his own house, than he maydo in his inn."

The amusements of the age were often rough, but certainly more moral thanthey were later; and although the theatres were denounced by suchreformers as Stubbes as seminaries of vice, and disapproved by Harrison;they were better than after the Restoration, when the plays ofShakespeare were out of fashion. The Londoners went for amusement to theBankside, or South Side of the Thames, where were the famous ParisGardens, much used as a rendezvous by gallants; and there were the placesfor bear and bull baiting; and there were the theatres--the ParisGardens, the Swan, the Rose, the Hope, and the Globe. The pleasure-seekers went over usually in boats, of which there were said to be fourthousand plying between banks; for there was only one bridge, and thatwas crowded with houses. All distinguished visitors were taken over tosee the gardens and the bears baited by dogs; the queen herself went, andperhaps on Sunday, for Sunday was the great day, and Elizabeth is said tohave encouraged Sunday sports, she had been (we read) so much hunted onaccount of religion! These sports are too brutal to think of; but thereare amusing accounts of lion-baiting both by bears and dogs, in which thebeast who figures so nobly on the escutcheon nearly always proved himselfan arrant coward, and escaped away as soon as he could into his den, withhis tail between his legs. The spectators were once much disgusted whena lion and lioness, with the dog that pursued them, all ran into the den,and, like good friends, stood very peaceably together looking out at thepeople.

The famous Globe Theatre, which was built in 1599, was burned in 1613,and in the fire it is supposed were consumed Shakespeare's manuscripts ofhis plays. It was of wood (for use in summer only), octagon shaped, witha thatched roof, open in the centre. The daily performance here, as inall theatres, was at three o'clock in the afternoon, and boys outsideheld the horses of the gentlemen who went in to the play. When theatreswere restrained, in 1600, only two were allowed, the Globe and theFortune, which was on the north side, on Golden Lane. The Fortune wasfifty feet square within, and three stories high, with galleries, builtof wood on a brick foundation, and with a roof of tiles. The stage wasforty-three feet wide, and projected into the middle of the yard (as thepit was called), where the groundlings stood. To one of the galleriesadmission was only twopence. The young gallants used to go into theyards and spy about the galleries and boxes for their acquaintances.In these theatres there was a drop-curtain, but little or no scenery.Spectators had boxes looking on the stage behind the curtain, and theyoften sat upon the stage with the actors; sometimes the actors allremained upon the stage during the whole play. There seems to have beengreat familiarity between the audience and the actors. Fruits in season,apples, pears, and nuts, with wine and beer, were carried about to besold, and pipes were smoked. There was neither any prudery in the playsor the players, and the audiences in behavior were no better than theplays.

The actors were all men. The female parts were taken usually by boys,but frequently by grown men, and when Juliet or Desdemona was announced,a giant would stride upon the stage. There is a story that Kynaston, ahandsome fellow, famous in female characters, and petted by ladies ofrank, once kept Charles I. waiting while he was being shaved beforeappearing as Evadne in "The Maid's Tragedy." The innovation of women onthe stage was first introduced by a French company in 1629, but theaudiences would not tolerate it, and hissed and pelted the actresses offthe stage. But thirty years later women took the place they have eversince held; when the populace had once experienced the charm of a femaleJuliet and Ophelia, they would have no other, and the rage for actressesran to such excess at one time that it was a fashion for women to takethe male parts as well. But that was in the abandoned days of CharlesII. Pepys could not control his delight at the appearance of NellGwynne, especially "when she comes like a young gallant, and hath themotions and carriage of a spark the most that ever I saw any man have.It makes me, I confess, admire her." The acting of Shakespeare himselfis only a faint tradition. He played the ghost in "Hamlet," and Adam in"As You Like It." William Oldys says (Oldys was an antiquarian who waspottering about in the first part of the eighteenth century, picking upgossip in coffee-houses, and making memoranda on scraps of paper in book-shops) Shakespeare's brother Charles, who lived past the middle of theseventeenth century, was much inquired of by actors about thecircumstances of Shakespeare's playing. But Charles was so old and weakin mind that he could recall nothing except the faint impression that hehad once seen "Will" act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein,being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appearedso weak and drooping and unable to walk that he was forced to besupported and carried by another person to a table, at which he wasseated among some company who were eating, and one of them sang a song.And that was Shakespeare!

The whole Bankside, with its taverns, play-houses, and worse, its bearpits and gardens, was the scene of roystering and coarse amusement.And it is surprising that plays of such sustained moral greatness asShakespeare's should have been welcome.

The more private amusements of the great may well be illustrated by anaccount given by Busino of a masque (it was Ben Jonson's "PleasureReconciled to Virtue") performed at Whitehall on Twelfthnight, 1617.During the play, twelve cavaliers in masks, the central figure of whomwas Prince Charles, chose partners, and danced every kind of dance, untilthey got tired and began to flag; whereupon King James, "who is naturallycholeric, got impatient, and shouted aloud, 'Why don't they dance? Whatdid you make me come here for? Devil take you all, dance!' On hearingthis, the Marquis of Buckingham, his majesty's most favored minion,immediately sprang forward, cutting a score of lofty and very minutecapers, with so much grace and agility that he not only appeased the ireof his angry sovereign, but moreover rendered himself the admiration anddelight of everybody. The other masquers, being thus encouraged,continued successively exhibiting their powers with various ladies,finishing in like manner with capers, and by lifting their goddesses fromthe ground . . . . The prince, however, excelled them all in bowing,being very exact in making his obeisance both to the king and hispartner; nor did we ever see him make one single step out of time--acompliment which can scarcely be paid to his companions. Owing to hisyouth, he has not much wind as yet, but he nevertheless cut a few capersvery gracefully." The prince then went and kissed the hand of his sereneparent, who embraced and kissed him tenderly. When such capers were cutat Whitehall, we may imagine what the revelry was in the Banksidetaverns.

The punishments of the age were not more tender than the amusements wererefined. Busino saw a lad of fifteen led to execution for stealing a bagof currants. At the end of every month, besides special executions,as many as twenty-five people at a time rode through London streets inTyburn carts, singing ribald songs, and carrying sprigs of rosemary intheir hands. Everywhere in the streets the machines of justice werevisible-pillories for the neck and hands, stocks for the feet, and chainsto stretch across, in case of need, and stop a mob. In the suburbs wereoak cages for nocturnal offenders. At the church doors might now andthen be seen women enveloped in sheets, doing penance for their evildeeds. A bridle, something like a bit for a restive horse, was in usefor the curbing of scolds; but this was a later invention than thecucking-stool, or ducking-stool. There is an old print of one of thesemachines standing on the Thames' bank: on a wheeled platform is anupright post with a swinging beam across the top, on one end of which thechair is suspended over the river, while the other is worked up and downby a rope; in it is seated a light sister of the Bankside, being dippedinto the unsavory flood. But this was not so hated by the women as asimilar discipline--being dragged in the river by a rope after a boat.

Hanging was the common punishment for felony, but traitors and many otheroffenders were drawn, hanged, boweled, and quartered; nobles who weretraitors usually escaped with having their heads chopped off only.Torture was not practiced; for, says Harrison, our people despise death,yet abhor to be tormented, being of frank and open minds. And "this isone cause why our condemned persons do go so cheerfully to their deaths,for our nation is free, stout, hearty, and prodigal of life and blood,and cannot in any wise digest to be used as villains and slaves." Felonycovered a wide range of petty crimes--breach of prison, hunting by nightwith painted or masked faces, stealing above forty shillings, stealinghawks' eggs, conjuring, prophesying upon arms and badges, stealing deerby night, cutting purses, counterfeiting coin, etc. Death was thepenalty for all these offenses. For poisoning her husband a woman wasburned alive; a man poisoning another was boiled to death in water oroil; heretics were burned alive; some murderers were hanged in chains;perjurers were branded on the forehead with the letter P; rogues wereburned through the ears; suicides were buried in a field with a stakedriven through their bodies; witches were burned or hanged; in Halifaxthieves were beheaded by a machine almost exactly like the modernguillotine; scolds were ducked; pirates were hanged on the seashore atlow-water mark, and left till three tides overwashed them; those who letthe sea-walls decay were staked out in the breach of the banks, and leftthere as parcel of the foundation of the new wall. Of rogues-that is,tramps and petty thieves-the gallows devoured three to four hundredannually, in one place or another; and Henry VIII. in his time did hangup as many as seventy-two thousand rogues. Any parish which let a thiefescape was fined. Still the supply held out.

The legislation against vagabonds, tramps, and sturdy beggars, and theirpunishment by whipping, branding, etc., are too well known to needcomment. But considerable provision was made for the unfortunate anddeserving poor--poorhouses were built for them, and collections taken up.Only sixty years before Harrison wrote there were few beggars, but in hisday he numbers them at ten thousand; and most of them were rogues, whocounterfeited sores and wounds, and were mere thieves and caterpillars onthe commonwealth. He names twenty-three different sorts of vagabondsknown by cant names, such as "ruffers," "uprightmen," "priggers,""fraters," "palliards," "Abrams," "dummerers "; and of women, "demandersfor glimmer or fire," "mortes," "walking mortes," "doxes," "kinchingcoves."

London was esteemed by its inhabitants and by many foreigners as therichest and most magnificent city in Christendom. The cities of Londonand Westminster lay along the north bank in what seemed an endlessstretch; on the south side of the Thames the houses were more scattered.But the town was mostly of wood, and its rapid growth was a matter ofanxiety. Both Elizabeth and James again and again attempted to restrictit by forbidding the erection of any new buildings within the town,or for a mile outside; and to this attempt was doubtless due the crowdedrookeries in the city. They especially forbade the use of wood in house-fronts and windows, both on account of the danger from fire, and becauseall the timber in the kingdom, which was needed for shipping and otherpurposes, was being used up in building. They even ordered the pullingdown of new houses in London, Westminster, and for three miles around.But all efforts to stop the growth of the city were vain.

London, according to the Venetian Busino, was extremely dirty. He didnot admire the wooden architecture; the houses were damp and cold,the staircases spiral and inconvenient, the apartments "sorry and illconnected." The wretched windows, without shutters, he could neitheropen by day nor close by night. The streets were little better thangutters, and were never put in order except for some great parade.Hentzner, however, thought the streets handsome and clean. When itrained it must have been otherwise. There was no provision forconducting away the water; it poured off the roofs upon the people below,who had not as yet heard of the Oriental umbrella; and the countryman,staring at the sights of the town, knocked about by the carts, and runover by the horsemen, was often surprised by a douche from a conduit downhis back. And, besides, people had a habit of throwing water and slopsout of the windows, regardless of passers-by.

The shops were small, open in front, when the shutters were down,much like those in a Cairo bazaar, and all the goods were in sight.The shopkeepers stood in front and cried their wares, and besoughtcustomers. Until 1568 there were but few silk shops in London, and allthose were kept by women. It was not till about that time that citizens'wives ceased to wear white knit woolen caps, and three-square Minevercaps with peaks. In the beginning of Elizabeth's reign the apprentices(a conspicuous class) wore blue cloaks in winter and blue gowns insummer; unless men were threescore years old, it was not lawful to weargowns lower than the calves of the legs, but the length of cloaks was notlimited. The journeymen and apprentices wore long daggers in the daytimeat their backs or sides. When the apprentices attended their masters andmistresses in the night they carried lanterns and candles, and a greatlong club on the neck. These apprentices were apt to lounge with theirclubs about the fronts of shops, ready to take a hand in any excitement--to run down a witch, or raid an objectionable house, or tear down atavern of evil repute, or spoil a playhouse. The high-streets,especially in winter-time, were annoyed by hourly frays of sword andbuckler-men; but these were suddenly suppressed when the more deadlyfight with rapier and dagger came in. The streets were entirelyunlighted and dangerous at night, and for this reason the plays at thetheatres were given at three in the afternoon.

About Shakespeare's time many new inventions and luxuries came in: masks,muffs, fans, periwigs, shoe-roses, love-handkerchiefs (tokens given bymaids and gentlewomen to their favorites), heath-brooms for hair-brushes,scarfs, garters, waistcoats, flat-caps; also hops, turkeys, apricots,Venice glass, tobacco. In 1524, and for years after, was used this rhyme

"Turkeys, Carpes, Hops: Piccarel, and beers, Came into England: all in one year."

There were no coffee-houses as yet, for neither tea nor coffee wasintroduced till about 1661. Tobacco was first made known in England bySir John Hawkins in 1565, though not commonly used by men and women tillsome years after. It was urged as a great medicine for many ills.Harrison says, 1573, "In these days the taking in of the smoke of theIndian herb called 'Tabaco,' by an instrument formed like a little ladle,whereby it passeth from the mouth into the head and stomach, is greatlytaken up and used in England, against Rewmes and some other diseasesengendered in the lungs and inward parts, and not without effect." It'suse spread rapidly, to the disgust of James I. and others, who doubtedthat it was good for cold, aches, humors, and rheums. In 1614 it wassaid that seven thousand houses lived by this trade, and that L 399,375a year was spent in smoke. Tobacco was even taken on the stage. Everybase groom must have his pipe; it was sold in all inns and ale-houses,and the shops of apothecaries, grocers, and chandlers were almost never,from morning till night, without company still taking of tobacco.

There was a saying on the Continent that "England is a paradise forwomen, a prison for servants, and a hell or purgatory for horses."The society was very simple compared with the complex condition of ours,and yet it had more striking contrasts, and was a singular mixture ofdownrightness and artificiality; plainness and rudeness of speech wentwith the utmost artificiality of dress and manner. It is curious to notethe insular, not to say provincial, character of the people even threecenturies ago. When the Londoners saw a foreigner very well made orparticularly handsome, they were accustomed to say, "It is a pity he isnot an ENGLISHMAN." It is pleasant, I say, to trace this "certaincondescension" in the good old times. Jacob Rathgeb (1592) says theEnglish are magnificently dressed, and extremely proud and overbearing;the merchants, who seldom go unto other countries, scoff at foreigners,who are liable to be ill-used by street boys and apprentices, who collectin immense crowds and stop the way. Of course Cassandra Stubbes, whosemind was set upon a better country, has little good to say of hiscountrymen.

"As concerning the nature, propertie, and disposition of the people theybe desirous of new fangles, praising things past, contemning thingspresent, and coveting after things to come. Ambitious, proud, light, andunstable, ready to be carried away with every blast of wind." The Frenchpaid back with scorn the traditional hatred of the English for theFrench. Perlin (1558) finds the people proud and seditious, with badconsciences and unfaithful to their word" in war unfortunate, in peaceunfaithful"; and there was a Spanish or Italian proverb: "England, goodland, bad people." But even Perlin likes the appearance of the people:"The men are handsome, rosy, large, and dexterous, usually fair-skinned;the women are esteemed the most beautiful in the world, white asalabaster, and give place neither to Italian, Flemish, nor German; theyare joyous, courteous, and hospitable (de bon recueil)." He thinks theirmanners, however, little civilized: for one thing, they have anunpleasant habit of eructation at the table (car iceux routent a la tablesans honte & ignominie); which recalls Chaucer's description of theTrumpington miller's wife and daughter:

Another inference as to the table manners of the period is found inCoryat's "Crudities" (1611). He saw in Italy generally a curious customof using a little fork for meat, and whoever should take the meat out ofthe dish with his fingers--would give offense. And he accounts for thispeculiarity quite naturally: "The reason of this their curiosity is,because the Italian cannot by any means indure to have his dish touchedwith fingers, seeing all mens fingers are not alike cleane." Coryatfound the use of the fork nowhere else in Christendom, and when hereturned, and, oftentimes in England, imitated the Italian fashion, hisexploit was regarded in a humorous light. Busino says that fruits wereseldom served at dessert, but that the whole population were munchingthem in the streets all day long, and in the places of amusement; and itwas an amusement to go out into the orchards and eat fruit on the spot,in a sort of competition of gormandize between the city belles and theiradmirers. And he avers that one young woman devoured twenty pounds ofcherries, beating her opponent by two pounds and a half.

All foreigners were struck with the English love of music and drink,of banqueting and good cheer. Perlin notes a pleasant custom at table:during the feast you hear more than a hundred times, "Drink iou" (heloves to air his English), that is to say, "Je m'en vois boyre a toy."You respond, in their language, "Iplaigiu"; that is to say, "Je vousplege." If you thank them, they say in their language, "God tanqueartelay"; that is, "Je vous remercie de bon coeur." And then, says theartless Frenchman, still improving on his English, you should respondthus: "Bigod, sol drink iou agoud oin." At the great and princelybanquets, when the pledge went round and the heart's desire of lastinghealth, says the chronicler, "the same was straight wayes knowne, bysound of Drumme and Trumpet, and the cannon's loudest voyce." It was soin Hamlet's day:

"And as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down, The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out The triumph of his pledge."

According to Hentzner (1598), the English are serious, like the Germans,and love show and to be followed by troops of servants wearing the armsof their masters; they excel in music and dancing, for they are livelyand active, though thicker of make than the French; they cut their hairclose in the middle of the head, letting it grow on either side; "theyare good sailors, and better pyrates, cunning, treacherous, andthievish;" and, he adds, with a touch of satisfaction, "above threehundred are said to be hanged annually in London." They put a good dealof sugar in their drink; they are vastly fond of great noises, firing ofcannon, beating of drums, and ringing of bells, and when they have aglass in their heads they go up into some belfry, and ring the bells forhours together, for the sake of exercise. Perlin's comment is that menare hung for a trifle in England, and that you will not find many lordswhose parents have not had their heads chopped off.

It is a pleasure to turn to the simple and hearty admiration excited inthe breasts of all susceptible foreigners by the English women of thetime. Van Meteren, as we said, calls the women beautiful, fair, welldressed, and modest. To be sure, the wives are, their lives onlyexcepted, entirely in the power of their husbands, yet they have greatliberty; go where they please; are shown the greatest honor at banquets,where they sit at the upper end of the table and are first served; arefond of dress and gossip and of taking it easy; and like to sit beforetheir doors, decked out in fine clothes, in order to see and be seen bythe passers-by. Rathgeb also agrees that the women have much moreliberty than in any other place. When old Busino went to the Masque atWhitehall, his colleagues kept exclaiming, "Oh, do look at this one--oh,do see that! Whose wife is this?--and that pretty one near her, whosedaughter is she?" There was some chaff mixed in, he allows, someshriveled skins and devotees of S. Carlo Borromeo, but the beautiesgreatly predominated.

In the great street pageants, it was the beauty and winsomeness of theLondon ladies, looking on, that nearly drove the foreigners wild.In 1606, upon the entry of the king of Denmark, the chronicler celebrates"the unimaginable number of gallant ladies, beauteous virgins, and otherdelicate dames, filling the windows of every house with kind aspect."And in 1638, when Cheapside was all alive with the pageant of the entryof the queen mother, "this miserable old queen," as Lilly calls Marie de'Medicis (Mr. Furnivall reproduces an old cut of the scene), M. de laSerre does not try to restrain his admiration for the pretty women onview: only the most fecund imagination can represent the content one hasin admiring the infinite number of beautiful women, each different fromthe other, and each distinguished by some sweetness or grace to ravishthe heart and take captive one's liberty. No sooner has he determined toyield to one than a new object of admiration makes him repent theprecipitation of his judgment.

And all the other foreigners were in the like case of "goneness."Kiechel, writing in 1585, says, "Item, the women there are charming, andby nature so mighty pretty as I have scarcely ever beheld, for they donot falsify, paint, or bedaub themselves as in Italy or other places;"yet he confesses (and here is another tradition preserved) "they aresomewhat awkward in their style of dress." His second "item" ofgratitude is a Netherland custom that pleased him--whenever a foreigneror an inhabitant went to a citizen's house on business, or as a guest,he was received by the master, the lady, or the daughter, and "welcomed"(as it is termed in their language); "he has a right to take them by thearm and to kiss them, which is the custom of the country; and if any onedoes not do so, it is regarded and imputed as ignorance and ill-breedingon his part." Even the grave Erasmus, when he visited England, felleasily into this pretty practice, and wrote with untheological fervor ofthe "girls with angel faces," who were "so kind and obliging." "Whereveryou come," he says, "you are received with a kiss by all; when you takeyour leave you are dismissed with kisses; you return, kisses arerepeated. They come to visit you, kisses again; they leave you, you kissthem all round. Should they meet you anywhere, kisses in abundance infine, wherever you move there is nothing but kisses"--a custom, says thisreformer, who has not the fear of Stubbes before his eyes, "never to besufficiently commended."

We shall find no more convenient opportunity to end this part of thesocial study of the age of Shakespeare than with this naive picture ofthe sex which most adorned it. Some of the details appear trivial; butgrave history which concerns itself only with the actions of conspicuouspersons, with the manoeuvres of armies, the schemes of politics, thebattles of theologies, fails signally to give us the real life of thepeople by which we judge the character of an age.

III

When we turn from France to England in, the latter part of the sixteenthand the beginning of the seventeenth century, we are in anotheratmosphere; we encounter a literature that smacks of the soil, that is asvaried, as racy, often as rude, as human life itself, and which cannot beadequately appreciated except by a study of the popular mind and thehistory of the time which produced it.

"Voltaire," says M. Guizot, "was the first person in France who spoke ofShakespeare's genius; and although he spoke of him merely as a barbariangenius, the French public were of the opinion that he had said too muchin his favor. Indeed, they thought it nothing less than profanation toapply the words genius and glory to dramas which they considered as crudeas they were coarse."

Guizot was one of the first of his nation to approach Shakespeare in theright spirit--that is, in the spirit in which he could hope for anyenlightenment; and in his admirable essay on "Shakespeare and His Times,"he pointed out the exact way in which any piece or period of literatureshould be studied, that is worth studying at all. He inquired intoEnglish civilization, into the habits, manners, and modes of thought ofthe people for whom Shakespeare wrote. This method, this inquiry intopopular sources, has been carried much further since Guizot wrote, and itis now considered the most remunerative method, whether the object ofstudy is literature or politics. By it not only is the literature of aperiod for the first time understood, but it is given its just place asan exponent of human life and a monument of human action.

The student who takes up Shakespeare's plays for the purpose of eitheramusement or cultivation, I would recommend to throw aside the whole loadof commentary, and speculation, and disquisition, and devote himself totrying to find out first what was the London and the England ofShakespeare's day, what were the usages of all classes of society, whatwere the manners and the character of the people who crowded to hear hisplays, or who denounced them as the works of the devil and the allies ofsin. I say again to the student that by this means Shakespeare willbecome a new thing to him, his mind will be enlarged to the purpose andscope of the great dramatist, and more illumination will be cast upon theplays than is received from the whole race of inquisitors into hisphrases and critics of his genius. In the light of contemporary life,its visions of empire, its spirit of adventure, its piracy, exploration,and warlike turmoil, its credulity and superstitious wonder at naturalphenomena, its implicit belief in the supernatural, its faith, itsvirility of daring, coarseness of speech, bluntness of manner, luxury ofapparel, and ostentation of wealth, the mobility of its shifting society,these dramas glow with a new meaning, and awaken a profounder admirationof the poet's knowledge of human life.

The experiences of the poet began with the rude and rural life ofEngland, and when he passed into the presence of the court and into thebustle of great London in an age of amazing agitation, he felt still inhis veins the throb of the popular blood. There were classicaffectations in England, there were masks and mummeries and classicpuerilities at court and in noble houses--Elizabeth's court would wellhave liked to be classical, remarks Guizot--but Shakespeare was notfettered by classic conventionalities, nor did he obey the unities,nor attempt to separate on the stage the tragedy and comedy of life--"immense and living stage," says the writer I like to quote because he isFrench, upon which all things are represented, as it were, in theirsolid form, and in the place which they occupied in a stormy andcomplicated civilization. In these dramas the comic element isintroduced whenever its character of reality gives it the right ofadmission and the advantage of opportune appearance. Falstaff appears inthe train of Henry V., and Doll Tear-Sheet in the train of Falstaff; thepeople surround the kings, and the soldiers crowd around their generals;all conditions of society, all the phases of human destiny appear byturns in juxtaposition, with the nature which properly belongs to them,and in the position which they naturally occupy. . . .

"Thus we find the entire world, the whole of human realities, reproducedby Shakespeare in tragedy, which, in his eyes, was the universal theatreof life and truth."

It is possible to make a brutal picture of the England of Shakespeare'sday by telling nothing that is not true, and by leaving out much that istrue. M. Taine, who has a theory to sustain, does it by a graphiccatalogue of details and traits that cannot be denied; only there is agreat deal in English society that he does not include, perhaps does notapprehend. Nature, he thinks, was never so completely acted out. Theserobust men give rein to all their passions, delight in the strength oftheir limbs like Carmen, indulge in coarse language, undisguisedsensuality, enjoy gross jests, brutal buffooneries. Humanity is as muchlacking as decency. Blood, suffering, does not move them. The courtfrequents bull and bear baitings; Elizabeth beats her maids, spits upon acourtier's fringed coat, boxes Essex's ears; great ladies beat theirchildren and their servants. "The sixteenth century," he says, "is likea den of lions. Amid passions so strong as these there is not onelacking. Nature appears here in all its violence, but also in all itsfullness. If nothing has been softened, nothing has been mutilated.It is the entire man who is displayed, heart, mind, body, senses, withhis noblest and finest aspirations, as with his most bestial and savageappetites, without the preponderance of any dominant passion to cast himaltogether in one direction, to exalt or degrade him. He has not becomerigid as he will under Puritanism. He is not uncrowned as in theRestoration." He has entered like a young man into all the lustyexperiences of life, every allurement is known, the sweetness and noveltyof things are strong with him. He plunges into all sensations. "Suchwere the men of this time, Raleigh, Essex, Elizabeth, Henry VIII himself,excessive and inconstant, ready for devotion and for crime, violent ingood and evil, heroic with strange weaknesses, humble with sudden changesof mood, never vile with premeditation like the roisterers of theRestoration, never rigid on principle like the Puritans of theRevolution, capable of weeping like children, and of dying like men,often base courtiers, more than once true knights, displaying constantly,amidst all these contradictions of bearing, only the overflowing ofnature. Thus prepared, they could take in everything, sanguinaryferocity and refined generosity, the brutality of shameless debauchery,and the most divine innocence of love, accept all the characters, wantonsand virgins, princes and mountebanks, pass quickly from trivialbuffoonery to lyrical sublimities, listen alternately to the quibbles ofclowns and the songs of lovers. The drama even, in order to satisfy theprolixity of their nature, must take all tongues, pompous, inflatedverse, loaded with imagery, and side by side with this vulgar prose; morethan this, it must distort its natural style and limits, put songs,poetical devices in the discourse of courtiers and the speeches ofstatesmen; bring on the stage the fairy world of opera, as Middletonsays, gnomes, nymphs of the land and sea, with their groves and meadows;compel the gods to descend upon the stage, and hell itself to furnish itsworld of marvels. No other theatre is so complicated, for nowhere elsedo we find men so complete."

M. Taine heightens this picture in generalizations splashed withinnumerable blood-red details of English life and character. The Englishis the most warlike race in Europe, most redoubtable in battle, mostimpatient of slavery. "English savages" is what Cellini calls them; andthe great shins of beef with which they fill themselves nourish the forceand ferocity of their instincts. To harden them thoroughly, institutionswork in the same groove as nature. The nation is armed. Every man is asoldier, bound to have arms according to his condition, to exercisehimself on Sundays and holidays. The State resembles an army;punishments must inspire terror; the idea of war is ever present. Suchinstincts, such a history, raises before them with tragic severity theidea of life; death is at hand, wounds, blood, tortures. The fine purplecloaks, the holiday garments, elsewhere signs of gayety of mind, arestained with blood and bordered with black. Throughout a sterndiscipline, the axe ready for every suspicion of treason; "great men,bishops, a chancellor, princes, the king's relations, queens, a protectorkneeling in the straw, sprinkled the Tower with their blood; one afterthe other they marched past, stretched out their necks; the Duke ofBuckingham, Queen Anne Boleyn, Queen Catherine Howard, the Earl ofSurrey, Admiral Seymour, the Duke of Somerset, Lady Jane Grey and herhusband, the Duke of Northumberland, the Earl of Essex, all on thethrone, or on the steps of the throne, in the highest ranks of honor,beauty, youth, genius; of the bright procession nothing is left butsenseless trunks, marred by the tender mercies of the executioner."

The gibbet stands by the highways, heads of traitors and criminals grinon the city gates. Mournful legends multiply, church-yard ghosts,walking spirits. In the evening, before bedtime, in the vast countryhouses, in the poor cottages, people talk of the coach which is seendrawn by headless horses, with headless postilions and coachmen.All this, with unbounded luxury, unbridled debauchery, gloom, and revelryhand in hand. "A threatening and sombre fog veils their mind like theirsky, and joy, like the sun, pierces through it and upon them strongly andat intervals." All this riot of passion and frenzy of vigorous life,this madness and sorrow, in which life is a phantom and destiny drives soremorselessly, Taine finds on the stage and in the literature of theperiod.

To do him justice, he finds something else, something that might give hima hint of the innate soundness of English life in its thousands of sweethomes, something of that great force of moral stability, in the midst ofall violence and excess of passion and performance, which makes a nationnoble. "Opposed to this band of tragic figures," which M. Taine arraysfrom the dramas, "with their contorted features, brazen fronts, combativeattitudes, is a troop (he says) of timid figures, tender beforeeverything, the most graceful and love-worthy whom it has been given toman to depict. In Shakespeare you will meet them in Miranda, Juliet,Desdemona, Virginia, Ophelia, Cordelia, Imogen; but they abound also inthe others; and it is a characteristic of the race to have furnishedthem, as it is of the drama to have represented them. By a singularcoincidence the women are more of women, the men more of men, here thanelsewhere. The two natures go to its extreme--in the one to boldness,the spirit of enterprise and resistance, the warlike, imperious, andunpolished character; in the other to sweetness, devotion, patience,inextinguishable affection (hence the happiness and strength of themarriage tie), a thing unknown in distant lands, and in France especiallya woman here gives herself without drawing back, and places her glory andduty in obedience, forgiveness, adoration, wishing, and pretending onlyto be melted and absorbed daily deeper and deeper in him whom she hasfreely and forever chosen." This is an old German instinct. The soul inthis race is at once primitive and serious. Women are disposed to followthe noble dream called duty. "Thus, supported by innocence andconscience, they introduce into love a profound and upright sentiment,abjure coquetry, vanity, and flirtation; they do not lie, they are notaffected. When they love they are not tasting a forbidden fruit, but arebinding themselves for their whole life. Thus understood, love becomesalmost a holy thing; the spectator no longer wishes to be malicious or tojest; women do not think of their own happiness, but of that of the lovedones; they aim not at pleasure, but at devotion."

Thus far M. Taine's brilliant antitheses--the most fascinating and mostdangerous model for a young writer. But we are indebted to him for amost suggestive study of the period. His astonishment, the astonishmentof the Gallic mind, at what he finds, is a measure of the difference inthe literature of the two races as an expression of their life. It wasnatural that he should somewhat exaggerate what he regards as the sourceof this expression, leaving out of view, as he does, certain great forcesand currents which an outside observer cannot feel as the race itselffeels. We look, indeed, for the local color of this English literaturein the manners and habits of the times, traits of which Taine has soskillfully made a mosaic from Harrison, Stubbes, Stowe, Holinshed, andthe pages of Reed and Drake; but we look for that which made it somethingmore than a mirror of contemporary manners, vices, and virtues, made itrepresentative of universal men, to other causes and forces-such as theReformation, the immense stir, energy, and ambition of the age (theresult of invention and discovery), newly awakened to the sense thatthere was a world to be won and made tributary; that England, and, aboveall places on the globe at that moment, London, was the centre of adisplay of energy and adventure such as has been scarcely paralleled inhistory. And underneath it all was the play of an uneasy, protestingdemocracy, eager to express itself in adventure, by changing itscondition, in the joy of living and overcoming, and in literature, withsmall regard for tradition or the unities.

When Shakespeare came up to London with his first poems in his pocket,the town was so great and full of marvels, and luxury, and entertainment,as to excite the astonishment of continental visitors. It swarmed withsoldiers, adventurers, sailors who were familiar with all seas and everyport, men with projects, men with marvelous tales. It teemed withschemes of colonization, plans of amassing wealth by trade, by commerce,by planting, mining, fishing, and by the quick eye and the strong hand.Swaggering in the coffee-houses and rufling it in the streets were themen who had sailed with Frobisher and Drake and Sir Humphrey Gilbert,Hawkins, and Sir Richard Granville; had perhaps witnessed the heroicdeath of Sir Philip Sidney, at Zutphen; had served with Raleigh in Anjou,Picardy, Languedoc, in the Netherlands, in the Irish civil war; had takenpart in the dispersion of the Spanish Armada, and in the bombardment ofCadiz; had filled their cups to the union of Scotland with England; hadsuffered shipwreck on the Barbary Coast, or had, by the fortune of war,felt the grip of the Spanish Inquisition; who could tell tales of themarvels seen in new-found America and the Indies, and, perhaps, likeCaptain John Smith, could mingle stories of the naive simplicity of thenatives beyond the Atlantic, with charming narratives of the wars inHungary, the beauties of the seraglio of the Grand Turk, and the barbaricpomp of the Khan of Tartary. There were those in the streets who wouldsee Raleigh go to the block on the scaffold in Old Palace Yard, who wouldfight against King Charles on the fields of Newbury or Naseby, Kineton orMarston Moor, and perchance see the exit of Charles himself from anotherscaffold erected over against the Banqueting House.

Although London at the accession of James I.(1603) had only about onehundred and fifty thousand inhabitants--the population of England thennumbering about five million--it was so full of life and activity thatFrederick, Duke of Wurtemberg, who saw it a few years before, in 1592,was impressed with it as a large, excellent, and mighty city of business,crowded with people buying and selling merchandise, and trading in almostevery corner of the world, a very populous city, so that one can scarcelypass along the streets on account of the throng; the inhabitants,he says, are magnificently appareled, extremely proud and overbearing,who scoff and laugh at foreigners, and no one dare oppose them lest thestreet boys and apprentices collect together in immense crowds and striketo right and left unmercifully without regard to persons.

There prevailed an insatiable curiosity for seeing strange sights andhearing strange adventures, with an eager desire for visiting foreigncountries, which Shakespeare and all the play-writers satirize.Conversation turned upon the wonderful discoveries of travelers, whosevoyages to the New World occupied much of the public attention. Theexaggeration which from love of importance inflated the narratives, thepoets also take note of. There was also a universal taste for hazard inmoney as well as in travel, for putting it out on risks at exorbitantinterest, and the habit of gaming reached prodigious excess. The passionfor sudden wealth was fired by the success of the sea-rovers, news ofwhich inflamed the imagination. Samuel Kiechel, a merchant of Ulm, whowas in London in 1585, records that, "news arrived of a Spanish shipcaptured by Drake, in which it was said there were two millions ofuncoined gold and silver in ingots, fifty thousand crowns in coinedreals, seven thousand hides, four chests of pearls, each containing twobushels, and some sacks of cochineal--the whole valued at twenty-fivebarrels of gold; it was said to be one year and a half's tribute fromPeru."

The passion for travel was at such a height that those who were unable toaccomplish distant journeys, but had only crossed over into France andItaly, gave themselves great airs on their return. "Farewell, monsieurtraveler," says Shakespeare; "look, you lisp, and wear strange suits;disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love with yournativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are,or I will scarce think you have swam in a gondola." The Londoners dearlyloved gossip, and indulged in exaggeration of speech and high-flowncompliment. One gallant says to another: "O, signior, the star thatgoverns my life is contentment; give me leave to interre myself in yourarms."--"Not so, sir, it is too unworthy an enclosure to contain suchpreciousness!"

Dancing was the daily occupation rather than the amusement at court andelsewhere, and the names of dances exceeded the list of the virtues--suchas the French brawl, the pavon, the measure, the canary, and many underthe general titles of corantees, jigs, galliards, and fancies. At thedinner and ball given by James I. to Juan Fernandez de Velasco, Constableof Castile, in 1604, fifty ladies of honor, very elegantly dressed andextremely beautiful, danced with the noblemen and gentlemen. PrinceHenry danced a galliard with a lady, "with much sprightliness andmodesty, cutting several capers in the course of the dance"; the Earl ofSouthampton led out the queen, and with three other couples danced abrando, and so on, the Spanish visitors looking on. When Elizabeth wasold and had a wrinkled face and black teeth, she was one day discoveredpracticing the dance step alone, to the sound of a fiddle, determined tokeep up to the last the limberness and agility necessary to impressforeign ambassadors with her grace and youth. There was one custom,however, that may have made dancing a labor of love: it was consideredill manners for the gentleman not to kiss his partner. Indeed, in allhouseholds and in all ranks of society the guest was expected to salutethus all the ladies a custom which the grave Erasmus, who was in Englandin the reign of Henry VIII., found not disagreeable.

Magnificence of display went hand in hand with a taste for cruel andbarbarous amusements. At this same dinner to the Constable of Castile,the two buffets of the king and queen in the audience-chamber, where thebanquet was held, were loaded with plate of exquisite workmanship, richvessels of gold, agate, and other precious stones. The constable drankto the king the health of the queen from the lid of a cup of agate ofextraordinary beauty and richness, set with diamonds and rubies, prayinghis majesty would condescend to drink the toast from the cup, which hedid accordingly, and then the constable directed that the cup shouldremain in his majesty's buffet. The constable also drank to the queenthe health of the king from a very beautiful dragon-shaped cup of crystalgarnished with gold, drinking from the cover, and the queen, standing up,gave the pledge from the cup itself, and then the constable ordered thatthe cup should remain in the queen's buffet.

The banquet lasted three hours, when the cloth was removed, the table wasplaced upon the ground--that is, removed from the dais--and theirmajesties, standing upon it, washed their hands in basins, as did theothers. After the dinner was the ball, and that ended, they took theirplaces at the windows of a roam that looked out upon a square, where aplatform was raised and a vast crowd was assembled to see the king'sbears fight with greyhounds. This afforded great amusement. Presently abull, tied to the end of a rope, was fiercely baited by dogs. After thistumblers danced upon a rope and performed feats of agility on horseback.The constable and his attendants were lighted home by half an hundredhalberdiers with torches, and, after the fatigues of the day, supped inprivate. We are not surprised to read that on Monday, the 30th, theconstable awoke with a slight attack of lumbago.

Like Elizabeth, all her subjects were fond of the savage pastime of bearand bull baiting. It cannot be denied that this people had a taste forblood, took delight in brutal encounters, and drew the sword and swungthe cudgel with great promptitude; nor were they fastidious in the matterof public executions. Kiechel says that when the criminal was driven inthe cart under the gallows, and left hanging by the neck as the cartmoved from under him, his friends and acquaintances pulled at his legs inorder that he might be strangled the sooner.

When Shakespeare was managing his theatres and writing his plays Londonwas full of foreigners, settled in the city, who no doubt formed part ofhis audience, for they thought that English players had attained greatperfection. In 1621 there were as many as ten thousand strangers inLondon, engaged in one hundred and twenty-one different trades. The poetneed not go far from Blackfriars to pick up scraps of German and folk-lore, for the Hanse merchants were located in great numbers in theneighborhood of the steel-yard in Lower Thames Street.

Foreigners as well as contemporary chronicles and the printed diatribesagainst luxury bear witness to the profusion in all ranks of society andthe variety and richness in apparel. There was a rage for the display offine clothes. Elizabeth left hanging in her wardrobe above threethousand dresses when she was called to take that unseemly voyage downthe stream, on which the clown's brogan jostles the queen's slipper.The plays of Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and of all thedramatists, are a perfect commentary on the fashions of the day, but aknowledge of the fashions is necessary to a perfect enjoyment of theplays. We see the fine lady in a gown of velvet (the foreigners thoughtit odd that velvet should be worn in the street), or cloth of gold andsilver tissue, her hair eccentrically dressed, and perhaps dyed, a greathat with waving feathers, sometimes a painted face, maybe a mask or amuffler hiding all the features except the eyes, with a muff, silkstockings, high-heeled shoes, imitated from the "chopine" of Venice,perfumed bracelets, necklaces, and gloves--"gloves sweet as damaskroses"--a pocket-handkerchief wrought in gold and silver, a smalllooking-glass pendant at the girdle, and a love-lock hanging wantonlyover the shoulder, artificial flowers at the corsage, and a mincing step."These fashionable women, when they are disappointed, dissolve intotears, weep with one eye, laugh with the other, or, like children, laughand cry they can both together, and as much pity is to be taken of awoman weeping as of a goose going barefoot," says old Burton.

The men had even greater fondness for finery. Paul Hentzner, theBrandenburg jurist, in 1598, saw, at the Fair at St. Bartholomew, thelord mayor, attended by twelve gorgeous aldermen, walk in a neighboringfield, dressed in a scarlet gown, and about his neck a golden chain,to which hung a Golden Fleece. Men wore the hair long and flowing,with high hats and plumes of feathers, and carried muffs like the women;gallants sported gloves on their hats as tokens of ladies' favors, jewelsand roses in the ears, a long love-lock under the left ear, and gems in aribbon round the neck. This tall hat was called a "capatain."Vincentio, in the "Taming of the Shrew," exclaims: "O fine villain!A silken doublet! A velvet hose! A scarlet cloak! And a capatain hat!"There was no limit to the caprice and extravagance. Hose and breechesof silk, velvet, or other rich stuff, and fringed garters wrought of goldor silver, worth five pounds apiece, are some of the items noted. Burtonsays, "'Tis ordinary for a gallant to put a thousand oaks and an hundredoxen into a suit of apparel, to wear a whole manor on his back." Evenserving-men and tailors wore jewels in their shoes.

We should note also the magnificence in the furnishing of houses, thearras, tapestries, cloth of gold and silver, silk hangings of manycolors, the splendid plate on the tables and sideboards. Even in thehouses of the middle classes the furniture was rich and comfortable, andthere was an air of amenity in the chambers and parlors strewn with sweetherbs and daily decked with pretty nosegays and fragrant flowers. Lightswere placed on antique candelabra, or, wanting these at suppers, therewere living candleholders. "Give me a torch," says Romeo; "I'll be acandle-holder, and look on." Knowledge of the details of luxury of anEnglish home of the sixteenth century will make exceedingly vivid hostsof allusions in Shakespeare.

Servants were numerous in great households, a large retinue being a markof gentility, and hospitality was unbounded. During the lord mayor'sterm in London he kept open house, and every day any stranger orforeigner could dine at his table, if he could find an empty seat.Dinner, served at eleven in the early years of James, attained a degreeof epicureanism rivaling dinners of the present day, although the guestsate with their fingers or their knives, forks not coming in till 1611.There was mighty eating and swigging at the banquets, and carousing wascarried to an extravagant height, if we may judge by the account of anorgy at the king's palace in 1606, for the delectation of the King andQueen of Denmark, when the company and even their majesties abandoneddiscretion and sobriety, and "the ladies are seen to roll about inintoxication."

The manners of the male population of the period, says Nathan Drake, seemto have been compounded from the characters of the two sovereigns. LikeElizabeth, they are brave, magnanimous, and prudent; and sometimes, likeJames, they are credulous, curious, and dissipated. The credulity andsuperstition of the age, and its belief in the supernatural, and thesumptuousness of masques and pageants at the court and in the city, ofwhich we read so much in the old chronicles, are abundantly reflected inthe pages of Jonson, Shakespeare, and other writers.

The town was full of public-houses and pleasure-gardens, but, curiouslyenough, the favorite place of public parading was the middle aisle of St.Paul's Cathedral--"Paul's Walk," as it was called--which was dailyfrequented by nobles, gentry, perfumed gallants, and ladies, from ten totwelve and three to six o'clock, to talk on business, politics, orpleasure. Hither came, to acquire the fashions, make assignations,arrange for the night's gaming, or shun the bailiff, the gallant, thegamester, the ladies whose dresses were better than their manners, thestale knight, the captain out of service. Here Falstaff purchasedBardolph. "I bought him," say's the knight, "at Paul's." The tailorswent there to get the fashions of dress, as the gallants did to displaythem, one suit before dinner and another after. What a study was thisvaried, mixed, flaunting life, this dance of pleasure and license beforethe very altar of the church, for the writers of satire, comedy, andtragedy!

But it is not alone town life and court life and the society of the finefolk that is reflected in the English drama and literature of theseventeenth century, and here is another wide difference between it andthe French literature of the same period; rural England and the popularlife of the country had quite as much to do in giving tone and color tothe writings of the time. It is necessary to know rural England to enterinto the spirit of this literature, and to appreciate how thoroughly ittook hold of life in every phase. Shakespeare knew it well. He drewfrom life the country gentleman, the squire, the parson, the pedanticschoolmaster who was regarded as half conjurer, the yeoman or farmer,the dairy maids, the sweet English girls, the country louts, shepherds,boors, and fools. How he loved a fool! He had talked with all thesepersons, and knew their speeches and humors. He had taken part in thecountry festivals-May Day, Plow Monday, the Sheep Shearing, the MorrisDances and Maud Marian, the Harvest Home and Twelfth Night. The rusticmerrymakings, the feasts in great halls, the games on the greensward,the love of wonders and of marvelous tales, the regard for portents,the naive superstitions of the time pass before us in his pages. Drake,in his "Shakespeare and his Times," gives a graphic and indeed charmingpicture of the rural life of this century, drawn from Harrison and othersources.

In his spacious hall, floored with stones and lighted by large transomwindows, hung with coats of mail and helmets, and all militaryaccoutrements, long a prey to rust, the country squire, seated at araised table at one end, held a baronial state and dispensed prodigalhospitality. The long table was divided into upper and lower messes by ahuge salt-cellar; and the consequence of the guests was marked by theirseats above or below the salt. The distinction extended to the fare, forwine frequently circulated only above the salt, and below it the food wasof coarser quality. The literature of the time is full of allusions tothis distinction. But the luxury of the table and good cooking were wellunderstood in the time of Elizabeth and James. There was massive eatingdone in those days, when the guests dined at eleven, rose from thebanquet to go to evening prayers, and returned to a supper at five orsix, which was often as substantial as the dinner. Gervase Markham inhis "English Housewife," after treating of the ordering of great feasts,gives directions for "a more humble feast of an ordinary proportion."This "humble feast," he says, should consist for the first course of"sixteen full dishes, that is, dishes of meat that are of substance, andnot empty, or for shew--as thus, for example: first, a shield of brawnwith mustard; secondly, a boyl'd capon; thirdly, a boyl'd piece of beef;fourthly, a chine of beef rosted; fifthly, a neat's tongue rosted;sixthly, a pig rosted; seventhly, chewets bak'd; eighthly, a gooserosted; ninthly, a swan rosted; tenthly, a turkey rosted; the eleventh, ahaunch of venison rosted; the twelfth, a pasty of venison; thethirteenth, a kid with a pudding in the belly; the fourteenth, an olive-pye; the fifteenth, a couple of capons; the sixteenth, a custard ordowsets. Now to these full dishes may be added sallets, fricases,'quelque choses,' and devised paste; as many dishes more as will make noless than two and thirty dishes, which is as much as can convenientlystand on one table, and in one mess; and after this manner you mayproportion both your second and third course, holding fullness on onehalf the dishes, and shew in the other, which will be both frugal in thesplendor, contentment to the guest, and much pleasure and delight to thebeholders." After this frugal repast it needed an interval of prayersbefore supper.

The country squire was a long-lived but not always an intellectualanimal. He kept hawks of all kinds, and all sorts of hounds that ranbuck, fox, hare, otter, and badger. His great hall was commonly strewnwith marrow-bones, and full of hawks' perches, of hounds, spaniels, andterriers. His oyster-table stood at one end of the room, and oysters heate at dinner and supper. At the upper end of the room stood a smalltable with a double desk, one side of which held a church Bible, theother Fox's "Book of Martyrs." He drank a glass or two of wine at hismeals, put syrup of gilly-flower in his sack, and always had a tun-glassof small beer standing by him, which he often stirred about withrosemary. After dinner, with a glass of ale by his side he improved hismind by listening to the reading of a choice passage out of the "Book ofMartyrs."

This is a portrait of one Henry Hastings, of Dorsetshire, in Gilpin's"Forest Scenery." He lived to be a hundred, and never lost his sight norused spectacles. He got on horseback without help, and rode to the deathof the stag till he was past fourscore.

The plain country fellow, plowman, or clown, is several pegs lower, anddescribed by Bishop Earle as one that manures his ground well, but letshimself lie fallow and untitled. His hand guides the plow, and the plowhis thoughts. His mind is not much disturbed by objects, but he can fixa half-hour's contemplation on a good fat cow. His habitation is under apoor thatched roof, distinguished from his barn only by loop-holes thatlet out the smoke. Dinner is serious work, for he sweats at it as muchas at his labor, and he is a terrible fastener on a piece of beef. Hisreligion is a part of his copyhold, which he takes from his landlord andrefers it wholly to his discretion, but he is a good Christian in hisway, that is, he comes to church in his best clothes, where he is capableonly of two prayers--for rain and fair weather.

The country clergymen, at least those of the lower orders, or readers,were distinguished in Shakespeare's time by the appellation "Sir," as SirHugh, in the "Merry Wives," Sir Topas, in "Twelfth Night," Sir Oliver,in "As You Like It." The distinction is marked between priesthood andknighthood when Vista says, "I am one that would rather go with SirPriest than Sir Knight." The clergy were not models of conduct in thedays of Elizabeth, but their position excites little wonder when we readthat they were often paid less than the cook and the minstrel.

There was great fondness in cottage and hall for merry tales of errantknights, lovers, lords, ladies, dwarfs, friars, thieves, witches,goblins, for old stories told by the fireside, with a toast of ale on thehearth, as in Milton's allusion

"---to the nut-brown ale, With stories told of many a feat"

A designation of winter in "Love's Labour's Lost" is

"When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl."

To "turne a crab" is to roast a wild apple in the fire in order to throwit hissing hot into a bowl of nutbrown ale, into which had been put atoast with some spice and sugar. Puck describes one of his wantonpranks:

"And sometimes I lurk in a gossip's bowl, In very likeness of a roasted crab, And when she drinks against her lips I bob:"

I love no roast, says John Still, in "Gammer Gurton's Needle,"

"I love no rost, but a nut-browne torte, And a crab layde in the fyre; A lytle bread shall do me stead, Much bread I not desire."

In the bibulous days of Shakespeare, the peg tankard, a species ofwassail or wish-health bowl, was still in use. Introduced to restrainintemperance, it became a cause of it, as every drinker was obliged todrink down to the peg. We get our expression of taking a man "a peglower," or taking him "down a peg," from this custom.

In these details I am not attempting any complete picture of the rurallife at this time, but rather indicating by illustrations the sort ofstudy which illuminates its literature. We find, indeed, if we go belowthe surface of manners, sober, discreet, and sweet domestic life, and anappreciation of the virtues. Of the English housewife, says GervaseMarkham, was not only expected sanctity and holiness of life, but "greatmodesty and temperance, as well outwardly as inwardly. She must be ofchaste thoughts, stout courage, patient, untired, watchful, diligent,witty, pleasant, constant in friendship, full of good neighborhood, wisein discourse, but not frequent therein, sharp and quick of speech,but not bitter or talkative, secret in her affairs, comportable in hercounsels, and generally skillful in the worthy knowledges which do belongto her vocation." This was the mistress of the hospitable house of thecountry knight, whose chief traits were loyalty to church and state,a love of festivity, and an ardent attachment to field sports. His well-educated daughter is charmingly described in an exquisite poem byDrayton:

He had, as antique stories tell,A daughter cleaped Dawsabel,A maiden fair and free;And for she was her father's heir,Full well she ycond the leirOf mickle courtesy.

"The silk well couth she twist and twine,And make the fine march-pine,And with the needle work:And she couth help the priest to sayHis matins on a holy day,And sing a psalm in Kirk.

"She wore a frock of frolic greenMight well become a maiden queen,Which seemly was to see;A hood to that so neat and fine,In color like the columbine,Ywrought full featously.

"Her features all as fresh aboveAs is the grass that grows by Dove,And lythe as lass of Kent.Her skin as soft as Lemster wool,As white as snow on Peakish Hull,Or swan that swims in Trent.

"This maiden in a morn betimeWent forth when May was in the primeTo get sweet setywall,The honey-suckle, the harlock,The lily, and the lady-smock,To deck her summer hall."

How late such a simple and pretty picture could have been drawn to lifeis uncertain, but by the middle of the seventeenth century the luxury ofthe town had penetrated the country, even into Scotland. The dress of arich farmer's wife is thus described by Dunbar. She had "a robe of finescarlet, with a white hood, a gay purse and gingling keys pendant at herside from a silken belt of silver tissue; on each finger she wore tworings, and round her waist was bound a sash of grass-green silk, richlyembroidered with silver."

Shakespeare was the mirror of his time in things small as well as great.How far he drew his characters from personal acquaintances has often beendiscussed. The clowns, tinkers, shepherds, tapsters, and such folk, heprobably knew by name. In the Duke of Manchester's "Court and Societyfrom Elizabeth to Anne" is a curious suggestion about Hamlet. Readingsome letters from Robert, Earl of Essex, to Lady Rich, his sister, thehandsome, fascinating, and disreputable Penelope Devereaux, he notes, intheir humorous melancholy and discontent with mankind, something in toneand even language which suggests the weak and fantastic side of Hamlet'smind, and asks if the poet may not have conceived his character of Hamletfrom Essex, and of Horatio from Southampton, his friend and patron.And he goes on to note some singular coincidences. Essex was supposed bymany to have a good title to the throne. In person he had his father'sbeauty and was all that Shakespeare has described the Prince of Denmark.His mother had been tempted from her duty while her noble and generoushusband was alive, and this husband was supposed to have been poisoned byher and her paramour. After the father's murder the seducer had marriedthe guilty mother. The father had not perished without expressingsuspicion of foul play against himself, yet sending his forgiveness tohis faithless wife. There are many other agreements in the facts of thecase and the incidents of the play. The relation of Claudius to Hamlet isthe same as that of Leicester to Essex: under pretense of fatherlyfriendship he was suspicious of his motives, jealous of his actions;kept him much in the country and at college; let him see little of hismother, and clouded his prospects in the world by an appearance ofbenignant favor. Gertrude's relations with her son Hamlet were much likethose of Lettice with Robert Devereaux. Again, it is suggested, in hismoodiness, in his college learning, in his love for the theatre and theplayers, in his desire for the fiery action for which his nature was mostunfit, there are many kinds of hints calling up an image of the DanishPrince.

This suggestion is interesting in the view that we find in the charactersof the Elizabethan drama not types and qualities, but individualsstrongly projected, with all their idiosyncrasies and contradictions.These dramas touch our sympathies at all points, and are representativeof human life today, because they reflected the human life of their time.This is supremely true of Shakespeare, and almost equally true of Jonsonand many of the other stars of that marvelous epoch. In England as wellas in France, as we have said, it was the period of the classic revival;but in England the energetic reality of the time was strong enough tobreak the classic fetters, and to use classic learning for modernpurposes. The English dramatists, like the French, used classichistories and characters. But two things are to be noted in their use ofthem. First, that the characters and the play of mind and passion inthem are thoroughly English and of the modern time. And second, and thisseems at first a paradox, they are truer to the classic spirit than thecharacters in the contemporary French drama. This results from the factthat they are truer to the substance of things, to universal humannature, while the French seem to be in great part an imitation, havingroot neither in the soil of France nor Attica. M. Guizot confesses thatFrance, in order to adopt the ancient models, was compelled to limit itsfield in some sort to one corner of human existence. He goes on to saythat the present "demands of the drama pleasures and emotions that can nolonger be supplied by the inanimate representation of a world that hasceased to exist. The classic system had its origin in the life of thetime; that time has passed away; its image subsists in brilliant colorsin its works, but can no more be reproduced." Our own literary monumentsmust rest on other ground. "This ground is not the ground of Corneilleor Racine, nor is it that of Shakespeare; it is our own; butShakespeare's system, as it appears to me, may furnish the plansaccording to which genius ought now to work. This system alone includesall those social conditions and those general and diverse feelings, thesimultaneous conjuncture and activity of which constitute for us at thepresent day the spectacle of human things."

That is certainly all that any one can claim for Shakespeare and hisfellow-dramatists. They cannot be models in form any more than Sophoclesand Euripides; but they are to be followed in making the drama, or anyliterature, expressive of its own time, while it is faithful to theemotions and feeling of universal human nature. And herein, it seems tome, lies the broad distinction between most of the English and Frenchliterature of the latter part of the sixteenth and the beginning of theseventeenth centuries. Perhaps I may be indulged in another observationon this topic, touching a later time. Notwithstanding the prevalentnotion that the French poets are the sympathetic heirs of classicculture, it appears to me that they are not so imbued with the trueclassic spirit, art, and mythology as some of our English poets, notablyKeats and Shelley.

Ben Jonson was a man of extensive and exact classical erudition; he was asolid scholar in the Greek and Roman literatures, in the works of thephilosophers, poets, and historians. He was also a man of uncommonattainments in all the literary knowledge of his time. In some of histragedies his classic learning was thought to be ostentatiouslydisplayed, but this was not true of his comedy, and on the whole he wastoo strong to be swamped in pseudo-classicism. For his experience of menand of life was deep and varied. Before he became a public actor anddramatist, and served the court and fashionable society with hisentertaining, if pedantic, masques, he had been student, tradesman, andsoldier; he had traveled in Flanders and seen Paris, and wandered on footthrough the length of England. London he knew as well as a man knows hisown house and club, the comforts of its taverns, the revels of lords andladies, the sports of Bartholomew Fair, and the humors of suburbanvillages; all the phases, language, crafts, professions of high and lowcity life were familiar to him. And in his comedies, as Mr. A. W. Wardpertinently says, his marvelously vivid reproduction of manners isunsurpassed by any of his contemporaries. "The age lives in his men andwomen, his country gulls and town gulls, his imposters and skelderingcaptains, his court ladies and would-be court ladies, his pulingpoetasters and whining Puritans, and, above all, in the whole ragamuffinrout of his Bartholomew Fair. Its pastimes, fashionable andunfashionable, its games and vapors and jeering, its high-politecourtships and its pulpit-shows, its degrading superstitions andconfounding hallucinations, its clubs of naughty ladies and its officesof lying news, its taverns and its tobacco shops, its giddy heights andits meanest depths--all are brought before us by our author."

No, he was not swamped by classicism, but he was affected by it, and justhere, and in that self-consciousness which Shakespeare was free from,and which may have been more or less the result of his classic erudition,he fails of being one of the universal poets of mankind. The genius ofShakespeare lay in his power to so use the real and individual facts oflife as to raise in the minds of his readers a broader and noblerconception of human life than they had conceived before. This iscreative genius; this is the idealist dealing faithfully with realisticmaterial; this is, as we should say in our day, the work of the artist asdistinguished from the work of the photographer. It may be an admirablebut it is not the highest work of the sculptor, the painter, or thewriter, that does not reveal to the mind--that comes into relation withit something before out of his experience and beyond the facts eitherbrought before him or with which he is acquainted.

What influence Shakespeare had upon the culture and taste of his own timeand upon his immediate audience would be a most interesting inquiry.We know what his audiences were. He wrote for the people, and thetheatre in his day was a popular amusement for the multitude, probablymore than it was a recreation for those who enjoyed the culture ofletters. A taste for letters was prevalent among the upper class, andindeed was fashionable among both ladies and gentlemen of rank. In thisthe court of Elizabeth set the fashion. The daughter of the duchess wastaught not only to distill strong waters, but to construe Greek. Whenthe queen was translating Socrates or Seneca, the maids of honor found itconvenient to affect at least a taste for the classics. For the noblemanand the courtier an intimacy with Greek, Latin, and Italian was essentialto "good form." But the taste for erudition was mainly confined to themetropolis or the families who frequented it, and to persons of rank, anddid not pervade the country or the middle classes. A few of the countrygentry had some pretension to learning, but the majority cared littleexcept for hawks and hounds, gaming and drinking; and if they read it wassome old chronicle, or story of knightly adventure, "Amadis de Gaul,"or a stray playbook, or something like the "History of Long Meg ofWestminster," or perhaps a sheet of news. To read and write were stillrare accomplishments in the country, and Dogberry expressed a commonnotion when he said reading and writing come by nature. Sheets of newshad become common in the town in James's time, the first newspaper beingthe English Mercury, which appeared in April, 1588, and furnished foodfor Jonson's satire in his "Staple of News." His accusation has afamiliar sound when he says that people had a "hunger and thirst afterpublished pamphlets of news, set out every Saturday, but made all athome, and no syllable of truth in them."

Though Elizabeth and James were warm patrons of the theatre, the courthad no such influence over the plays and players as had the court inParis at the same period. The theatres were built for the people, andthe audiences included all classes. There was a distinction between whatwere called public and private theatres, but the public frequented both.The Shakespeare theatres, at which his plays were exclusively performed,were the Globe, called public, on the Bankside, and the Blackfriars,called private, on the City side, the one for summer, the other forwinter performances. The Blackfriars was smaller than the Globe, wasroofed over, and needed to be lighted with candles, and was frequentedmore by the better class than the more popular Globe. There is noevidence that Elizabeth ever attended the public theatres, but thecompanies were often summoned to play before her in Whitehall, where theappointments and scenery were much better than in the popular houses.

The price of general admission to the Globe and Blackfriars was sixpence,at the Fashion Theatre twopence, and at some of the inferior theatres onepenny. The boxes at the Globe were a shilling, at the Blackfriars one-and-six. The usual net receipts of a performance were from nine to tenpounds, and this was about the sum that Elizabeth paid to companies for aperformance at Whitehall, which was always in the evening and did notinterfere with regular hours. The theatres opened as early as oneo'clock and not later than three in the afternoon. The crowds thatfilled the pit and galleries early, to secure places, amused themselvesvariously before the performance began: they drank ale, smoked, foughtfor apples, cracked nuts, chaffed the boxes, and a few read the cheappublications of the day that were hawked in the theatre. It was a roughand unsavory audience in pit and gallery, but it was a responsive one,and it enjoyed the acting with little help to illusion in the way ofscenery. In fact, scenery did not exist, as we understand it. A boardinscribed with the name of the country or city indicated the scene ofaction. Occasionally movable painted scenes were introduced. Theinterior roof of the stage was painted sky-blue, or hung with drapery ofthat tint, to represent the heavens. But when the idea of a dark,starless night was to be imposed, or tragedy was to be acted, theseheavens were hung with black stuffs, a custom illustrated in manyallusions in Shakespeare, like that in the line,

"Hung be the heavens in black, yield day to night"

To hang the stage with black was to prepare it for tragedy. The costumesof the players were sometimes less niggardly than the furnishing of thestage, for it was an age of rich and picturesque apparel, and it was notdifficult to procure the cast-off clothes of fine gentlemen for stageuse. But there was no lavishing of expense. I am recalling thesedetails to show that the amusement was popular and cheap. The ordinaryactors, including the boys and men who took women's parts (for women didnot appear on the stage till after the Restoration) received only aboutfive or six shillings a week (for Sundays and all), and the first-classactor, who had a share in the net receipts, would not make more thanninety pounds a year. The ordinary price paid for a new play was lessthan seven pounds; Oldys, on what authority is not known, says thatShakespeare received only five pounds for "Hamlet."

The influence of the theatre upon politics, contemporary questions thatinterested the public, and morals, was early recognized in the restraintsput upon representations by the censorship, and in the floods of attacksupon its licentious and demoralizing character. The plays of Shakespearedid not escape the most bitter animadversions of the moral reformers.We have seen how Shakespeare mirrored his age, but we have less means ofascertaining what effect he produced upon the life of his time. Untilafter his death his influence was mainly direct, upon the play-goers,and confined to his auditors. He had been dead seven years before hisplays were collected. However the people of his day regarded him, it issafe to say that they could not have had any conception of the importanceof the work he was doing. They were doubtless satisfied with him.It was a great age for romances and story-telling, and he told stories,old in new dresses, but he was also careful to use contemporary life,which his hearers understood.

It is not to his own age, but to those following, and especially to ourown time, that we are to look for the shaping and enormous influence uponhuman life of the genius of this poet. And it is measured not by thelibraries of comments that his works have called forth, but by theprevalence of the language and thought of his poetry in all subsequentliterature, and by its entrance into the current of common thought andspeech. It may be safely said that the English-speaking world and almostevery individual of it are different from what they would have been ifShakespeare had never lived. Of all the forces that have survived out ofhis creative time, he is one of the chief.